Are our identities held back by our "identities"?

The newest social network Path launched this week, and it made me question a lot of things. It is built on being personal and has a friend limit of 50 people. Its reasoning is that they know you censor what you put on Facebook and Twitter because of how public they are, and that you want to have a service to just talk to friends.

This made me think about how we censor our true identities. We all say we want people and friends to love us for who we are, but then we lie or make images of ourselves that show only one side. We try to show who we want to be, not who we are, and this may hurt us more than it helps. If everyone just stopped worrying about what others thought, then I'm positive the world would be a better place. But currently we are too entrapped in what we want to become to just be content with ourselves.  Do we also deny our natural progress by trying to fit ourselves in a mold we wish to fill out? Creative people are told that they should not follow their dreams because there is no money in them, and some conform to this. Do they deny their true selves because they see themselves as someone who needs money to be happy?


I know this post is a lot of questions, but if I had all these answers I'm sure I would be on some motivational speaker circuit and having my face on my #1 best seller "Dare to be you" or something equally as cheesy.