Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 | 1:15 PM

I love how we all play different roles in each other�s lives and how we�re all like characters in this massive web of interconnected novels. I love that I and you and you and YOU can be a million different characters in the course of one day.

Just think about it�not only am I the protagonist of my own life�a fully developed and complex human being with virtues and faults, but in someone else�s life, I�m a flat character or a plot point, or even a force of malevolence.

I can think of someone off hand�someone I barely know and have probably exchanged less than 200 words with, whose soul purpose as a character in my life is to push various �story lines� along by revealing information that has been kept hidden.

And yet that person has an entire other life outside of the character she plays in my universe.

This is something that I find amazing and overwhelming at the same time. Because there is a part of me that can always see something someone else�s way or recognize the beauty in a person who basically annoys the shit out of me. I can empathize with just about any situation or point of view and can so easily be talked or reasoned out of feeling/thinking one way and into feeling/thinking another (that�s part of what makes me a good actress�I was saying to Angus the other night that I�m like water�I can be poured into anything and take on the shape of the container�I am in certain ways so thoroughly piscean.) So the only true method I�ve found of creating boundaries is to go with my immediate gut instinct�and this is of course an imperfect method (but so is logic.)

The only thing I have to remember is to constantly re-evaluate my instincts to see where I am at any given time and not attach myself to them. But being so constantly tuned in to where you are and how you feel is sort of scary. It necessitates total honesty at at all times.

I don�t know if any of us realize how many little white lies we tell ourselves, and how each one is a brick in the wall between us and self actualization.