You are what you eat

The things that you consume become you.

Of course, this can be taken literally; All the building blocks that you built your body with came from food eaten by either you, or your mother, mixed up, digested, and stuck together again in some sort of bizarre pastiche of meat and bones we call a human being.

But, I mean to imply mainly a figurative connotation to my earlier statement.

The things you consume become you.

The music, media, people, culture, clothing, house, car, movies, television, ideas, and beliefs you surround yourself with change you and mold you to fit them.

Example: You watch Jersey Shore. You like it, and want to talk about it. You find, or make, friends who also enjoy it. You talk about Jersey Shore. One of your friends who likes Jersey Shore listens to, say, 2 Chainz. You give it a listen and enjoy it. You look for new friends, &c ad nauseum. 

This doesn't seem like a big deal, most people would call it "culture".

But, look closer. First, the decision to watch one show led to a whole slew of acquaintances. You talk with them about the things you share. You reinforce these social bonds. You talk more about these things, and then think more about these things, until it's a big part of your life.

This isn't really a bad thing; we wouldn't have a society as we know today without it, and I picked examples that seem negative.

You see, our sense of who we are, our idea of "me" or "I", is definition by negation.

That is to say, we begin where everything else stops. Be that physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever.

We see all this stuff that is "not-me", and everything that isn't filled in by that "not-me", must then be me.

We define ourselves by our surroundings.

I mean, if someone asks you "Who are you?", where do you start?

You list things around you: I am a student, a Buddhist, a poet, &c. 

These are not things that ARE me, they are just ideas, actions, and places, that I have chosen to surround myself with.

The things we consume become us, become the way we think, and speak, and feel, and interact with and about everything and everyone else in the world.

The point of this is this: Be careful that the things you consume don't consume you.

You are the aggregate of everything you do, or watch, or listen to.

Make sure those things make you the person you want to be.

Don't just do things because everyone else is, because it's bigger than that.

If you listen to music because everyone else is listening to it, or the same with movies, or television;

If you let other people decide what you do, You no longer control who you are.

You are letting other people define WHO YOU ARE.

That is, maybe, why so many people are unhappy.

Because we have grown so used to letting other people influence us so much in our consumption, in the way we feel about things, our ideas.

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson, perhaps, went a bit too far; we imitate things all the time.

But when you let culture, or television, or anything else decide the things you surround yourself with, you are giving up control of your very "Self" to some other person.

You are what you eat;

Have some food for thought.