WHO AM I? WHO ARE YOU?

By Kristin Scheimer

Driving home one night, I looked up at a billboard and saw the faces of Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. 

It immediately brought to mind a movie I love:“9 to 5”.

So I was curious about this new show these two extremely funny ladies were starring in for Netflix called “Grace and Frankie”.  Then I saw a promo for the show and I was even more intrigued.  The show also stars Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston and is the brainchild of Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris. 

The premise is simple and yet incredibly complex:  Two men in their 70s announce to their wives of 40 years that they are leaving them… for each other.  They’re gay, they’ve been having an affair for 20 years and now that it’s legal for them to get married, they want to do so.

This article isn’t going to be a review of the show.  I enjoyed it immensely and will definitely watch a second season if it comes out.  I encourage you to watch it and make your own assessment.

What struck me most about the show was what it would have been like for men like Sol and Robert as young men.  It’s possible the idea that they were gay wasn’t even something in their reality. 

What would it be like to not have the option to wonder: am I straight or am I gay?  You would just go through life assuming you’re straight because that’s what you believe you’re supposed to be.

I come from a very liberal family, so the possibility that I was gay was not something that would have been the end of the world.  Which is how I know I’m straight.  I had the option and searching internally… well it wasn’t hard for me to see where my preference lies.  But what if I was gay and I lived in a world where I didn’t even know such a thing existed?  Is it possible, even if on some level I knew, that I might never realize that part of myself? 

This got me thinking: What other parts of our lives are affected in the same way?

How much of me is me because it’s me, and how much is me because someone – a parent, a teacher, friends, society – told me that’s who I’m supposed to be?

I realize this is a deep and profound question and one that cannot truly be answered in a short blog article, but it is something to consider.

We can start with something simple like taste in music, movies, books or even whether or not one reads books. 

I grew up without a TV and without much else in the form of entertainment, except for one thing: Books.  So, naturally I grew up to love books, and again anyone who has helped me move can attest to how MUCH I love books.  Not once as an adult have I moved without one of my helpers saying “Damn!  You have a lot of books!”

Do I love books because I love books or because I was raised to love books?  Nature vs. Nuture – an age old debate. 

This is how I know I truly love books.  I read for a living.  I read BAD SCRIPTS for a living.  You would think this would turn me off of reading anything ever again.  But it doesn’t.  For me, the best way to end a day is with a hot bath, a glass of wine and a book.

I was also raised vegetarian and as an adult I can tell you: I love meat.  (Sorry, Mom).  So, while I was raised to be vegetarian (nurture), I grew to realize very shortly after becoming an adult that it was not what I liked.  In fact, I once had an acupuncturist tell me that with my body type, it was unhealthy for me to be a vegetarian (nature).   And this is where vegetarians will have a debate about whether or not that acupuncturists’ statement was true.  Go ahead.  Debate away.  I’m gonna be over here enjoying a steak.  J

Music.   I love Classical Music.  Do I get this from my mother?  Probably, but I don’t like Classical Music because she told me to.  I genuinely love it.  I also like Common, but I can guarantee you my mother doesn’t have a single Common CD in her collection. (Yes.  Some of us still have CDs.  Heck.  Some of us still have vinyl!)

However, if I didn’t grow up with Classical Music it’s possible I may never have realized this love I have for it, simply because it wasn’t an option available to me. 

So how, with all the many influences that impact us from the moment we’re born, can we determine who we are vs. who someone tells us to be?

It’s not an easy thing.  It takes a very strong mind and a very strong sense of self-awareness.  As I journey towards more self-awareness, believe you me, I’ve been rather shocked by some of the things I simply took for granted as being true when in fact, they’re not really true to me; deep seated beliefs that drive me that I didn’t choose to believe because they were true to me, but they somehow wormed their way into my belief system and took up residence.  It’s hard to undo all of that and weed out what you really believe vs. what you’re told to believe. 

What IS easy is not rocking the boat.  Not going against the grain.  Not swimming up stream.  As you all may know by now, I have a degree in American History with an emphasis on Social History.

One of the things I love most about American History is the number of incredibly brave troublemakers who have transformed us from the promising, but extremely flawed country we were when we first started to a… still promising, but slightly less flawed country we are now.

The end of slavery, women getting the right to vote,

the civil rights movement, the free speech movement,

the feminist movement, the United Farm Workers, and countless other “movements” in this country came about because of people who looked at the norm, at the accepted, at what they were “supposed” to believe and said “No!  That is NOT what I believe!”

That takes an enormous amount of courage.  From infancy our entire existence consists of other people telling us what is and who we are.  To go against that because we know in our hearts, in our guts, that what we’re being told is wrong… that’s not easy.

But it’s not just the things we’re told we ARE that influence us.  It’s also the things that have never been presented to us as things we CAN or CANNOT BE.

It you’re given a finite list of things you can be, then you’re limited to becoming only one of those things.  How much of who you are is because of such limitations?

As a woman, growing up when I did, I certainly should have a very strong sense of things I’m allowed to be and things I’m not allowed to be.  Well, as far as career ambitions, I never got the message that I couldn’t be something.  I think I have my mother to thank for that.  If the idea was out there in society that women can’t be this or women can’t be that, it was certainly not what was taught in our home, so somehow it passed me by.

And here I am, passionately pursuing the life of a writer.  So what if something like 18% of the Writers Guild of America is women?   Who cares if less than half of new network shows employ women writers?  (Ok… I care)  But the reality is, I’m a writer and no statistic is going tell me I’m not.

But before you think I’ve escaped the pervasive misogyny in our society, have no fear, I received that message loud in clear in other ways.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered in one of my therapy sessions that I actually believed, somewhere deep down, that men were more important, more valuable, more valid and to be taken more seriously than women.  What?!

The reality is, that message is everywhere in society, sometimes in the most subtle of ways.  (Take a look at the cover of a woman’s magazine sometime)  That’s a hard one to escape.

I could also discuss the wage disparity between men and women or the other countless sexist customs, actions, words and norms that exist in our world, but that's a topic for another day.

So yes, I too have been influenced by society.  While I may not believe I can’t be a writer because I’m a woman, I have still had to overcome the more damaging and deeper concept that simply as a person I have less value than a man, solely because I’m a woman.

Before Barack Obama became President of the United States, a person of color believing they could be anything they wanted – the Presidency always being presented as the pinnacle of being “anything you want” – was likely very limited. 

That’s the benefit of role models.  And as I have said many times in the past, those of us who make films and television shows have the unique and rather powerful opportunity to create new and influential role models.  These role models expand our ideas of what we are or what we could be.  The more possibilities, the more likely it is that what is our true nature will be included in the options.

I leave you now to contemplate:

Which beliefs, about yourself and the world around you, are true to what you believe and which beliefs do you carry with you, that inform your thoughts, words and actions, that were put on you, but that you know in the very depths of your soul are false?

Which likes and dislikes are really yours and which do you have because you were told you should?

What’s out there that you have never even considered as something you might like, as a career choice, as your sexual (or romantic if you’ve read my previous article on the subject) orientation? 

And

Which choices have you made because they were your own, even though they went against everything you’d been taught to believe? 

As someone who loves (and loathes that I do) to overthink everything, I could go on and on about this.  While I don’t encourage anyone to go overboard with this, self-exploration is extremely important.  It could make a 50 year old man realize he’s been gay his whole life, but never even considered it a possibility.  It could make someone quit their job as an accountant to pursue life as a horse trainer.  It could cause someone to realize they have no interest whatsoever in being an actor, but what they really want to do is work on Wall Street.

No choice, no like or dislike, no preference, no belief (unless this belief means harm to someone) is wrong if it’s true to you.