I had a sort of epiphany the other day. The kind of panic-stricken moment of thought which fleets by most and is a cause of fixation for the select unfortunate who tend to brood on the insignificant.
My own name, Mathias, doesn't actually mean anything. I have spent my whole life identified by a brief collection of sounds which inherently has little meaning and outwardly shows nothing whatsoever about the person it denotes. For instance, a quick Google search will tell you that the name 'Mathias' means 'Gift of God', which is blatantly ironic because I'm quite certain there is no god. At least not in any way close to anything anyone has ever been able to imagine in their head of heads.
I find myself unable to identify with my own name, or any name, for that matter. Perhaps the only real names which I can possibly accept are the ones which I tried to ignore as a schoolboy riddled with bullying. The ones that only brutally honest children with no real sense of political correctness can come up with and still maintain a relatively clean conscience. Ones like 'Fat Boy' or 'Bocca' (the loose translation for any readers who aren't native Maltese speakers is 'marble'). At least these names are descriptive, albeit somewhat too descriptive.
At least these names are caricatures of what we seem to be to others. They are somehow acceptable in relation to the world. Instead we are stuck with a birth name which was given to us when we had little or no identity. Sure we can always change our name in the eyes of the law, but that wouldn't really change much, would it? We would still be 'Mathias', 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Susan' in the end and we would all know it.
It's just such a pity that the one sound which truly chases us around throughout life to the point that even hearing something similar to it instantly catches our attention because we are conditioned to conform to the "call - response" physical nexus, actually means nothing to us at all most of the time.
Good night, the interwebz.
If that is your real name.
