persona

Old Greek word for the masks used in drama - you still see them, one laughing, one weeping, on much that has a theatrical connection...
Psychology, of course, uses the term to mean the 'person' one is under any given circumstance... What follows, then, is my take on my various "mes".

Dramatis personae... the cast of the endless saga...each one a cobbled attempt at response to a series of "situations"...
I play the long-haired, dopey hippie as my basic role... Keeps people from trying to out me... I've lost already... This is quite a useful stance to take - lets you get on with what's important without too much interference from testosteroned-up nutters...
Then there's the Boodhist/Taoist feller and all his parephernalia... endless boox and a glib tongue...
Then the scholar... Kabbalist, Gnostic, Pagan, magic(k), you name it... The alchemist, of course...
Also husband, father, mentor, friend... lover, cook, mr. fixit, the loving father, the irate father, catfriend, dreamer, poet, musician, reader...

Hats.
Sometimes you put them on yourself; sometimes they put themselves on for you before you've noticed... more particularly the less 'nice' ones...
Often based on aeons of karma - of belief that such-and-such is like this, and so-and-so is like that, or OTHER peoples' beliefs ditto (you're the guy with the beard: you must be cool/you must be some kind of dork/what're you hiding? etc.)...
Also (generally unconscious) family and peer-group transmissions and traditions, sometimes exquisitely cruel, sometimes just beautiful...

So (when I remember!) I try to see beyond these - beyond the need to "be" any one (or even any group of several) of these.
After all, they are all 'response' and therefore only a concatenation of cause and effect. Anything that is simply mutually defining cause and effect must naturally be devoid of an ultimate "reality" in itself. The faces in the mirror are just that: appearances in the mirror dependingt on what its reflecting...'guest' rather than 'host', to use the terminology of Ch'an Buddhism.

... And the 'host' seems ultimately unknowable...