Where does authenticity end and roleplaying begin? When are we our true selves, and when are we behaving the way a spy might? 

In John Le Carré’s excellent novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold the character Alec Leamas has been a spy for the British Secret Service for the better part of his life.

A key element of his cover is the fact that he is an alcoholic, or at least, he pretends to be. According to him the best way to go deep undercover as a long-term alcoholic is to drink every day for years. 

Were Leamas to decide that tradecraft was not for him, and rather, painting or sailing or writing poetry ought to be his vocation, could he quit drinking?
Would he quit drinking?

It seems clear that we are what we do, even if, as we do it, we tell ourselves it is somehow separate from us. If we spend our lives doing something, it doesn’t really matter if we told ourselves it was a bit of a joke all along, we’ve still done it. This is intimately connected to the namesake of this blog. A Zazen Bozo is someone who has spent their life as a spy, and decided they’re actually a painter, only to realize that painting is hard, and they’d really like a drink. 

I’m quite fond of roleplaying games. The pictures above these words are of a TTRPG I played last night, the middle person, Will’s, first such. I spent a lot of hours playing textbased games on the internet pretending to be other people and other things and other ways. But all those hours pale in comparison to the lifetime I’ve spent putting on facades of varrying opacity. 

When I’ve just met someone I’m timid, or attempting to affect a certain quality, is that me? When I know someone very well and have little inhibition or anxiety and speak freely, is that me? When I am alone in the woods and can talk to myself, is that me? Is the me that I spend the most time as, me? 

The pictures at the top are pictures I took at work, and the pictures at the bottom are pictures I took, as I said, of a roleplaying game. What’s the difference, do you think?

Bozo.