What I Am Like

It's been a long time since I've seen the movie High Fidelity, but I've seen a quote from the movie pop up on the web from time to time which I'll paraphrase here: It's what you like that matters, not what you are like.

I couldn't disagree more. To me, this quote epitomizes the civilized world's media obsession. If you're currently thinking, "But Chuck, aren't a good number of posts at EG about games, music, and movies?" then I would respond that yes, you're absolutely correct. But, in the last defense of myself that I will make in this post, I try as hard as I can not to let my stuff define who I am. If my self is truly defined by a pile of books or a few songs written by other people or what games I play, then it is my opinion that I have lived a trite and meaningless life.

The catch is that those things can say something about who I am to someone else. They're an easy means for others to classify who I am quickly without really getting to know me. For instance, imagine that you didn't know that I am a musician by trade. If you happened to spot a death metal album by Lamb of God in my music collection, what assumptions would you make about me in that instant? Answer truthfully. Now pretend that you continued to scan my collection and spotted a bluegrass album by Flatt and Scruggs. What would you think of me then? Also, how would your reaction have changed if the order of those artists had been reversed? Those questions are only partly rhetorical and I ask them not out of antagonism but true curiosity.

When I die, I truly hope that nobody says of me, "Remember that time when Chuck was totally into video games? That was awesome!" I would rather people remember me for the love I have for my family or how I tried to make some sort of positive impact on the world around me no matter how small or insignificant. I argue that the only way for those hopes to come true is through my willingness to act accordingly between now and my own day of reckoning. So to that end, my actions, those little things that speak much louder than words according to the idiom, what I am like becomes infinitely more important than the media I consume.