Our True, Though Temporary, Selves

People often talk about "who they are" or being their "true selves".  Frankly, that's a crock.  People don't have true selves.  We are a collection of randomly fluctuating thoughts and feelings.  In a single day, a person may wake up grouchy, mellow out into calmness, rise into happiness, explode into rage, plummet into despondence, and finally becoming numb.  Your state of mind may be completely different during each of those phases, but they are all equally you.

The closest a person can come to having a "true self" is having a dominant mindset.  If you are a grouchy dude for the majority of the waking day, then you're just a grouchy dude.  Any time you show any feeling or perform any action that is not what a grouchy dude would do, you are somebody different, or at least, that's how you'll be treated.

Some people's dominant mindset is a total bummer.  You know those people, right?  They're down in the dumps, only focus on the bad things, and nothing can convince them otherwise.  These people are usually aware of their mindset and are often unhappy with it, but they feel stuck in it because it dominates their mind.  These people don't feel that they are their true selves just because they feel that way most of the time.  Their true selves are happy, well-adjusted people who don't have negative thoughts.

Regardless of the specifics, people's mindsets are temporary.  However we are feeling, that feeling will change.

This can be a point of contention with writing.  Audiences simultaneously want realistic and understandable characters.  Those qualities can often be mutually exclusive.  Realistic characters are bizarre.  Sometimes people just switch moods.  There's no rhyme or reason to it.  Sometimes there are reasons, but they are so complex and numerous that it would be a daunting chore to explain it in a story.  And if the character isn't consciously aware of the reasons why and is narrating the story, it would be seriously jarring for readers.  Conversely, characters who are simpler and easier to understand feel fake.  The hero with no goal but defeating the villain is one dimensional.  The good-natured hero with a troubled past is more fleshed out, but still two-dimensional at best.

So what are we to do?  The simple answer is compromise.  One thing we can do is find middle ground between the person who never changes their mindset and the person who changes it eight times a day.  The other thing we can do is try to find an explanation for every change of mindset that a character goes through.

Of course, if you want to be brave, you can refuse the compromise.  Make a character that is realistic.  Make a character who jumps from mood to mood, elation to despair, calmness to blinding violent rage.  Don't explain it any more than the character is aware of.  Maybe the audience will go for it.  If these mood swings really are as ubiquitous as they seem, maybe more people will relate to them than one would think.  Then again, people also seem to hold characters to different standards than we hold ourselves, so who knows.

There's only one way to find out for sure.