By Yoobin Tara Park

Embrace the fluidity, the selflessness, the ever-shifting nature of your being.

We all scatter and coalesce. 


At a party, beneath the hum of music and half-empty cups, an American guy asks me my name. I hesitate.

"My name is Tara. Or Yoobin."

He frowns. I rephrase.

"My name is Yoobin, but you can call me Tara."

He asks me what my real name was. I let out an awkward laugh. What does he mean by real name? Names are just words that people use to refer to me.

I tell him people call me Yoobin where I am from.

“It’s funny — I even have a Chinese name for my Chinese friends,” I say.“You know, just so it sounds as familiar to them as their own.”.

He tells me I should use Yoobin instead of having an English name.

It’s just a name — just a sound. But somehow, it feels like each one carves out a different version of me, depending on who’s listening.

I imagine living as Yoobin Park in America. I don’t talk to or smile at strangers. I don’t ask, “How are you? I don’t text, ‘We should catch up soon!’ to the girl I haven’t seen since our entrance ceremony three years ago. I don’t hug people. I am glued to my phone, except when I’m with adults. I am overly polite to adults, wearing mild smiles and jeans — never too short, never too loose. I keep my opinions measured. I filter my humor. That’s just the way it is: tone it down, smooth the edges, don’t stand out too much. People like Yoobin better that way.

Yoobin always packs Tara when she comes to Austin. Tara goes to parties, starts conversations, asks people how their day went, and makes plans with everyone. She does not get upset when her texts go unanswered, because she doesn't try to be too close to everyone. She compliments everything. She tries to be an expert in one or two things, maintains a healthy hobby, keeps up with celebrity news, and scrolls through TikTok just enough to stay in the loop. She always wears her biggest smile and watches what other cool people are wearing. People like Tara better that way.

Laughter feels different when there’s no one around to hear it. Words no longer reach anyone but the waves. I imagine myself alone, maybe on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Without anyone to call a name, without a role to play, what is there to define what remains?

Is the self nothing more than a construct, stitched together by fleeting perceptions and shifting contexts? Or is it actually something that can be specified?

I am nervous. Who am I?

Ironically, it's easier to look for other people’s answers about who I am than to ask myself. Call it cowardice.

Erving Goffman pats me on the shoulder — not with a reassuring "It's okay," but with:

“We often find a division into the back region, where the performance of a routine is prepared, and the front region, where the performance is presented.”

Social situations are stages. I act in front of others and prepare backstage. I act as Tara in America and Yoobin in Korea.

Which one is real: Yoobin or Tara? Was the guy at the party right? Because I was born and raised in Korea, because I am used to the culture, am I faking Tara? I feel like myself when I am Tara as much as I am Yoobin.

I believe in my passions, my hobbies —  the things that feel uniquely mine. But they are all shaped by forces beyond my control — the names I’ve been given, the roles I’ve been assigned, the relationships that have defined me. Identity is fluid, constantly shifting in response to external conditions and relationships. So one version of me is not the ultimate truth.

Am I truly Yoobin? Or Tara?

Perhaps I am neither.

Question marks hook onto my sleeves, tugging me off the stage and toward the shade of the Bodhi tree. The Buddha awaits there, ready to illuminate a misguided soul  — namely, yours truly. His truth is clear and unwavering: Anatta.

Anatta, or non-self, denies the notion that the self exists as an independent and unchanging entity. One does not exist in isolation, but rather through countless interdependent relationships with external entities. Just as a tree grows because of water, sunlight, soil, and fertilizer, I, too, am sustained by things that are not me.

The self is a product of dependent origination, or pratītyasamutpāda — it is constantly formed and reformed through relationships.

Seemingly, Erving Goffman couldn’t tell me who I am — or whether I am anything definable at all. But Buddha took me a long way. Religious philosophy can feel intangible, like smoke slipping through my fingers. I decide to look for one more source. Call it courage.

In a quiet lab, under flickering fluorescent lights, a rubber hand rests on a table.
Its silent wave takes me back to the 1998 experiment by Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan Cohen.

They hid participants’ real hands from view and placed rubber ones in front of them.
When both the hidden real hand and the visible fake hand were brushed at the same time, participants began to feel as if the rubber hand were their own.

This experiment revealed how easily the brain can be deceived — how vision alone can override other senses and create a false sense of bodily ownership. If our sense of self was absolute, the brain should have immediately recognized the deception. But it didn’t. Instead, it adapted, integrating external stimuli into a new perception of reality.

If a rubber hand can feel real simply because it is seen, why couldn’t a name? Maybe identity is also too easily embraced — convinced that the way I am being called is more than just a name, that it is me. Just as the brain gathers sensory input to decide what belongs to the body, it also collects external cues — names, roles, expectations — to define the self.

But if that’s the case, then I was never only Yoobin, nor only Tara. I have never been just one thing. I am fluid, shifting — I mold myself to fit the moment.

When I strip away the names, the roles, the performances, what remains? Nothing.

Or, perhaps, everything.

I return to Anatta: the absence of a fixed self. We are scattered, we are gathered, we slip in and out of identities like clothing. There is no need to cling to just one.

The world, including ourselves, is in a constant state of flux — things change, disappear, return, or vanish forever.

We all scatter and coalesce.

We all scatter and coalesce. ■