I keep seeing “This is the worst day of your life, but the first day of yourself” being used in a positive manner, usually to show how that band has grown, but that’s not how I interpret it.* I could be wrong. But you’ve gotta look at that quote/speech in context.
This is said in the middle of their brainwashing. “This is the worst day of your life” = this is the horrible torture/brainwashing they’re enduring. And they’re enduring it to become what the MOAT wants them to be.
This is the first day of yourself? Yeah. Yourself as in what the MOAT has made you. Not necessarily who you are. What they puppet you to be.
And if we keep building off that, we can consider public perception. This is from a different speech given in the same shows.
“I see you, but no, we’ve never met. They gave me a picture and I’ve had it quite some time. In fact, before you said a word, I’ve always heard your voice. Have you heard mine?”
This is a very direct connection to audience and identity/the intimacy of knowing someone. Millions of people have seen pictures of the band, ‘know’ the band parasocially. But no, we’ve never met. I’ve always heard your voice, have you heard mine?
It’s about public perception of who they are. It’s about who they try to be, who the world wants them to be, what the industry wants them to be, what they are. It’s about them being all of that, yet none of it at all.
If you take these two sections of speeches into context with each other, then it becomes clear that ‘yourself’ is undefined and turbulent. Fluid and ever changing. If millions of people see you a million different ways, and none of them are truly how you see yourself, then who are you?
It’s not self-actualization. It’s a confrontation of the nature of identity as a concept, a notion that is especially challenged when there are so many eyes on you.
*I’m not saying the band hasn’t grown, they absolutely have. I’m saying I don’t think the speech is referring to that
