COLUMN: Tattoos, meaning and the ideal self
Tattoo culture permeates today’s millennial world.
According to a 2010 Pew Research study, 4 in 10 millennials have a tattoo. About half of those with tattoos have two to five, and 18 percent have six or more.
I am one of those millennials.
I have two tattoos. For me, it isn’t about being a part of a culture, or trying to look any particular way. Tattoos have permanence. With that permanence, I believe tattoos also have transcendency — much like a literary work. Tattoos are symbols. Tattoos are stories.
My tattoos are symbols of my internal war against cynicism and complacency. They are my way of reminding myself to be a better human being and to strive toward my ideal self, even in the realization that the ideal self is unattainable.
Idealism often finds itself within the young, yet years of living deteriorate it and replace it with cynicism. Polarity toward either value is harmful, yet compromise between the two leads to wisdom, self-improvement and meaning. My life derives meaning from my tattoos.
The post-structuralist movement of the mid 20th century, heralded by Jacques Derrida, would argue there is no universal, or capital “T,” truth, and the meaning I gain from my tattoos does not exist — at least not objectively — because they are signs that constantly “defer” meaning and point to other signs. In this instance, “sign” refers to the structuralist idea that a sign is made up of both a “signifier” and a “signified.” The signifier is the physical object, and the signified is the meaning or concept that is culturally assigned to it.
Long winded definitions aside, I believe a lack of objectivity does not equate to a lack of importance.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Make the most of yourself...for that is all there is of you.” You do not need to do this by getting tattoos. The type of manifestation is irrelevant, as long as it exists.
My meaning, and my view of a better self is subjective, and so is yours. But subjective meaning, in my purely subjective opinion, is better than none at all.
