Who am I?

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same." - Michel Foucault. I am deeply drawn to that quote. I love the shortness of it, the lack of explanation, the hard truth people seem to feel uncomfortable hearing. We like to go through life holding other people to a contract that they did not sign, which says 'Don't change', when change should be expected. We often ask ourselves the question 'Who am I?' as the years pass. It is inevitable- things change around us, we discover new things to love, or realize there are things we will no longer tolerate. As children, we are often told who we are, and not being experienced enough to question it, we believe it. As teenagers, we fight against it, trying to gain back some autonomy, but most of the time, following our peers, not being free. As adults, who we are depends greatly on the responsibilities we carry during the time period we are in. I have always felt that I was a liquid that can't be contained in a cage. I am not alone in that feeling. "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing- a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process- in integral function of the universe." - R. Buckminster Fuller. I have remade myself over and over again, changing jobs, locations, and interests, but having roughly the same values, a personal code of right and wrong I will not go against. "I already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be." - Joan Didion, On keeping a notebook. I will continue this process even after I am dead.

I have been told that my inability to stick to one path is a bad way of getting where I'm supposed to be going. How can you stay on the path if your destination keeps changing? Point taken, but if you have a general direction, say North, who cares how you got there? Maybe, you took the smoothest, fastest route, and maybe you took your time wandering, or got lost exploring new paths. You may have no idea who you are, but will discover it along the way. And if you don't, you will at least have found a lot of things to compare. "A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing." - unknown. Where does the idea of who we are come from?

We see who we are through the eyes of others- "The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you." -Carl Jung. As soon as we are born, what the people around us think of us is reflected in their eyes, their tone of voice, and their body language. If our family loves us and thinks we are wonderful, we feel pretty good about ourselves. Then we go out into the world and may be shocked to find that others don't seem to think we're all that great. Sometimes, they reflect so much disapproval that we pull back, we learn to read the room, we lose who we are in favor of belonging. Some people get tired of going against their true nature and decide to fight back. "You're right, I am more than a little weird and a bit awkward. No, I don't fit in and most people don't understand me. But at least I'm being real and I think the world needs more people who are brave enough to be real." - Brooke Hampton Being real does not mean that you'll be understood. "If people misunderstand you, do not worry... it is your voice that they hear, but what goes through their mind is... their own thoughts." - Rumi. Since you cannot control how others perceive you, maybe what they are choosing to reflect back on you shouldn't matter so much.

Lose all expectations and allow-"To love someone is to attend a thousand births of the person they are becoming." - Pinterest, posted by Sinnerhella. Unconditional love would be just that, unconditional. Love that does not fade when someone who you expected always to be the same is suddenly someone else. Why is it so difficult to let them live in a manner that you disapprove of? Maybe it is because they no longer serve your purposes. Had a hot wife that you loved showing off gain some weight or stop dressing sexy? You said you loved her, but she changed. Had a kid that had star potential for football suddenly tell you they weren't into sports anymore? You were their biggest fan, but they changed. Are you able to live with that? How you respond to the choices of others will help you understand more fully who you are.

Do not put other people in a box- We are all guilty of doing this, but if we don't like being put in a box, we should not be doing it to others. We think we know what people are thinking, how they are going to respond to certain situations, and often we are correct. Humans develop patterns of behavior that are fairly predictable, and we use that prediction to judge others. Life, though, is continuously happening to us and to everyone else. Yes, you might have just spoken to your kid 10 minutes ago, but maybe something life-changing has happened to them since then. "We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger." - T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party. How much easier it would be to forgive others if we treated them like we were meeting them for the first time. Alas, this is not our way. Our brains are wired to identify patterns, our hearts are wired to pass judgment, and our eyes are looking for danger so that we can protect ourselves. Our reality is truly all about us. In this environment, can we ever know someone else? "I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." - Charles Horton Cooley. You might want to reread that several times, bang your head against the wall, and then stare into space for a while (you're welcome). My work here is now done. Who am I? That depends on who you are and what I think you see me as. If you liked the quotes used in this post, I have created a free printable quote sheet available here.

Love and Hope,

Big Sky Baby