I saw the title and I thought: oh, an article written by a younger person. And boom, sure enough, there it was. I do not mean that as a ageist comment at all.

I saw the title and I thought: oh, an article written by a younger person. And boom, sure enough, there it was. I do not mean that as a ageist comment at all. It's just one of the things I've noticed about younger people is that they feel there are all these different lives. And somehow they must choose between them. To me, part of the reason why is that they confuse who the actor and who the responder is. To assume there are all these different lives, you must assume that there are all of these different social groups that "tell" you what to do and how to act. Then you respond doing as you are told. It's not that this is a lie, it is just woefully incomplete. A better way of looking at things is that you are the person communicating. As a good communicator, it is your job to communicate things in ways various groups can consume. For my existentialist friends, being deep does not preclude being authentic. So no, I don't tell the same off-color jokes in a religious group as I would when going out with friends to a bar, but that's not because I am a different person, am trying to live a different life, or any of that. That's because I have learned that to effectively communicate with some people, off-color jokes shut them down. All communication ceases. This is bad for me and for them. So I choose to adapt my communication style. They can still know that I like an off-color joke -- I'm not hiding who I am or trying to change myself -- it's just that I'm smart enough not to share those things with them. Something I've been cogitating on for a while: I think that younger people have kind of a hole in their life where they don't really know who they are. Probably a natural part of growing up. Because there's this uncertainty of their own personality, it's rather easy to begin to feel as if perhaps you have more than one! (Perhaps people of all ages feel this way. For some reason it is much more noticeable in younger folks. I know I felt this way when I was younger.) Having said that, I'd also add that there's a difference between personal and public information. I am a firm believer in honesty and openness. But that doesn't mean that I have any responsibility to dump my life story on random strangers. It just means that for those things I choose to share publicly, I choose to be as honest as possible about them. Given the context. In fact, for sake of argument I'll take the opposite opinion (I love being a contrarian!) I'd argue that most people are really, really bad at being able to adapt their communication skills to a wide range of audiences. Instead, they seem to feel that nuance and depth are somehow deceptive. I blame this on many things, but technology definitely plays a role. When everything you do or say is public, it has a tendency to turn you into a one-dimensional person. That's a shame. It lowers the level of civil discourse for society as a whole.