Hi! My name is...

... Legion, for I am many. I was at a point in time, one individual, one entity. But you changed all that. You look at me and judge me with your trying eyes. Hypocrite! I can read your expressions of love, hate, anger, lust and fear even as the motions of your mouth convey another language. I was naive once and it was then that I used to wonder at the mixed reactions registered on your face plain as daylight and how much appearances matter to you, non-contextual though they were.

I created all these masks for you coz you want me to appear "normal" and your definition of normal is as varied as the societies, institutes, laws and countries that you have contrived. Be that as it may, I dont know who I am anymore. I look in the mirror hoping to get a clue but all I see are my eyes, a distant flame burning somewhere in their depths. My name is Legion for I am many and if you are looking at me then you are looking at something that I want you to see. The real beast lurks within!

David Gale's lecture

From Lacan’s point of view, fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek you don’t / can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. Its not the “it” that you want it’s the fantasy of “it”. So desire supports crazy fantasies.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happenings or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill or be careful of what you wish for, not because you will get it but because you are doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is that living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you have attained in terms of your desires, but by those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality even self-sacrifice because in the end, the only way we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.