Law 25: Re-Create Yourself

Principally, the 25th law advocates being the master of one's image via two processes: self-consciousness and self-creation.

According to the law, the initial step is to be aware of the image one projects to society; consequently, one should be cautious of becoming a sleeping prawn that ebbs with the water's tide. However, this passive aspect must be responded to- without action, awareness is a lost cause.

Armadine Dudevant, French feminist, encompassed this wakefulness by pursuing writing in seventeenth century Paris despite society's demand for her to "make babies and not literature."

In response to self-consciousness, this law invokes the artist in every individual to creatively discard the ready-made role that society has already cooked for him/her.

As a painter (and thus director of the image of what he paints), Diego Velazquez acknowledged having control not only over the image of the royalty he painted in Las Meninas, but also over his and that of the commoners. Accordingly, we all are painters of our own images.

By recognizing life's theatricality, Julius Caesar likened society to a stage, where actors owned the stage and freely portrayed the roles that they wished to exemplify. Dudevant, for example, published novels and granted her place as a writer by effectively playing the role of a man under the pseudonym, "George Sand." Even Hatshepsut had that appeal by proclaiming herself "King of Upper and Lower Egypt."

The key is to be conscious of one's self as an artist who, through dramatic devices, actively controls one's actions, emotions, and appearance in the light of an audience. By being an artist, one manipulates the unfolding of events, using the timing of every event to his/her gain. By being an artist – by being "all things to all men" – one embodies the flexibility required to adapt to shifting situations. By being an artist, one creates for his/her self an unforgettable identity that dazzles the most.

The dignity in this technique can be seen in the intense difficulty of clashing with the flow that everybody else has surrendered and settled for conformity and uniformity. How, then, should one mold/remake one's self in lieu of being different and still being desirable(to one's self and to other people)?

"You are the pilot of your own life."
–Cody Martin from the Suite Life of Zack and Cody

Marcy Leonora V. Pilar