Who am I?

I am potential

But my identity is forged from restraints

We choose who we want to be

Cognito ergo sum

But as we are ever-shifting (an embodiment of change) our identities are equally fluid

People fear this unpredictableness and therefore create labels

Without definitions, there is no common understanding

We must relate, hence we create a persona

In a sense Ubuntu - I am because of you; I am me, through you

I am ambivalence, a sentient oxymoron

The me you see, the me you hear, the me you think you know is one and the same

Yet also is not

It is only a shard of me

A shard of endless possibilities.

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Edit: 10th May 2021

"A different version of you exists in the minds of everyone you've ever known" 

Just as our name belongs to us but is used most by others, who we are - our identities - often hold more weight in the minds of others than we do ourselves. In a frightening sense, we are who society claims us to be, hence, labels, factions, cliques, etc.

But we know who we are - we are divergent. We are who we claim we are to be. We are who we say we are.

Who I was yesterday is not the same as who I am today - yes, it is a continued existence and responsibility must be held for promises we made, but I shall not be condemned for the mistakes of yesterday if I vow to better myself tomorrow. 

Everyone can change. We evolve beyond the person we were a minute before. Everyday we are us, I am me, but we are also not. 

References: 

1. https://thecreative.cafe/spiral-power-the-wisdom-of-gurren-lagann-2785d5dc64c6

2. One, No One and One Hundred Thousand - Luigi Pirandello 

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Edit: 18th May 2021

All of us have experienced being idealized. This generally occurs when someone overestimates someone else's sports ability, intelligence, or creativity amongst other personality traits. Idealization is often a result of false projections, colloquially known as "a different version of you existing in the minds of everyone that you know". This is problematic as when one's idealized projection is shared with others, one's character traits are often amplified and exaggerated due to cumulative error – a natural flaw within communication and interpretation. This cumulative error further disassociates the idealized projection from the original person which causes embarrassment and disappointment among a slew of other emotions for all parties involved when the original person cannot live up to their idealized projection. Unfortunately, idealized projections are either awkwardly allowed by the original person to continue to exist in the minds of others because either trying to dispel this false projection leads to further praise of modesty, there are too many false projections and it is futile to dispel them all, or the original person cannot convince the other person who they are because they do not truly understand who they are either. The original person, therefore, tries to live up to these false projections (often attempting to superimpose this idealized projection onto themselves with the help of "masks") despite knowing that they are doomed to fail.  

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Edit: 18th Jan 2021

I can't say for sure who I am, but I can say for sure who I am not.

We cannot prove that anything is, but progress is eliminative – it is proving what things are not.

Just like Galileo – disproved geocentrism, but did not prove heliocentrism