who are you?
in Church they tell you your identity is in Christ alone. everything else about yourself is a mere reflection of The Flesh. it doesn’t matter in the Eyes Of God. what matters is that you are utterly despicable for doing nothing more than simply being. it’s not your fault though, you were simply meant to be that way. you don’t deserve the love that God can offer. and yet, He Gives it Freely.
as long as you do this, this, and this.
and you never do that, that, or, of course, that.
ashes to ashes, dust to dust. you were born of sin and if you don’t devote your life and sacrifice pleasure, liberty, and your Self, you will be swallowed by the excruciating flames of hell for all of eternity.
and of course, this can breed some Lost Souls. those that grew up the Right Way, or perhaps found righteousness along the way. but something happened to them. must have been in the water. social media. that damned liberal university. they’re brainwashed. that’s why they’re depressed. that’s why they’re struggling. God’s testing them. if only they’d pray about it. my heart breaks for them.
“i don’t even know who you are anymore,” you tell them.
they look themselves in the mirror and say the same thing. and then realize
they never knew to begin with.
do any of us really know to begin with?
what defines our Self? what creates our identity?
the bounds of where we find our identity changes with each stage of life.
throughout your childhood and adolescence, it’s wrapped with the idea of school. do you do well in school? always the first to raise your hand? participant of the math bee? spelling bee? are you the line leader? the student that has to be moved from seat to seat, because you simply cannot help but to talk to everyone you meet? what sport do you play outside the hours of school? “you know, if you stick with it, you could get a scholarship and play in college.” there’s no better time to tell this to an individual than the ripe age of ten.
once you find yourself in secondary schooling, your options for identity expand ever so slightly. i mean the way that people react when you tell them, “i was a theatre kid in high school” is universal. as if the phrase encapsulates every aspect of your being at that time. are you in student government? or, the defining question of all defining questions, do you work at chick-fil-a?
and then, the question of college. who you are is where you go. the reputation of the school, the city where it’s located. you become, to others, where you go. from now on, when they see you, their first question will be “how’s [insert name of college here]?” you are almost reduced to where you go, lumped in with everyone else that goes there. and of course, there’s the factor of what you study. allegedly, it’s something you’re passionate about, so that would mean it’s an accurate reflection of who you are, right?
and then, your job. what you do, where you work, how much you work, how long you’ve worked there, how much you make. That’s who you are. right?
or are you your preferences? your sexuality? what you consume? the books you read, the shows you watch, the music you listen to?
is it external? your physical appearance? the way you present yourself to the world? the clothes you wear? the colors you present with your energy?
or is it something more internal? your thoughts, actions, and behavior. are you defined within the bounds of your past? every shitty thing you have said or done. every failure you’ve had. every mistake you’ve made. or, rather, your goals for the future? where you want to live. what you want to do. if you want a family. who you’d want it with. if you want to travel. or if you even have future goals in the conventional sense?
i think it’s everything.
i took a class last spring by the name of anthropology of mental health. each week, we had a lecture on tuesdays and discussion on thursdays. one week we discussed the Self. each group would go about posing a question and we would all discuss our perceptions of the answer. my group posed a question that of course will seem to never leave me,
“is the notion of self produced by attributing meaning to experiences or do experiences provide meaning for the notion of self?”
sure.
i believe the answer is simply,
sure.
i believe our identity is found in everything. the Self is produced through our every experience. and our every experience shapes our Self.
we are the things we do, people we meet, places we go. each time we encounter, we take a piece. we take a piece of that person, of that thing.
i see pieces of others within myself each day. the people i love, the people i have loved, even the people passing through.
and just as you take a piece, you give a piece. however,
we choose what pieces to give. we choose what parts of our Self we show to others. or they choose which parts of our Self they take. whether it be something you explicitly offer or it be something buried beneath the surface they see with their ground penetrating radar.
and that- is our identity.
i have used the words Self and identity interchangeably throughout. however, many theorists make a clear distinction between self and identity. Self is everything within, whereas identity is how you present yourself to others.1 you cannot have one without the other, but i do believe this could be an accurate and necessary distinction indeed.
i mean, if you were to take every piece of yourself you’ve ever given to other people, every outward action you’ve ever committed, every way you have ever looked, every word you have ever typed or spoken and put them together- you wouldn’t be able to build yourSelf.
there’s always more. we always have more.
and i think that’s something a lot of people can struggle with. we compare our identity and our Self, wondering why they don’t match up. as if the outside perception Has to match what’s within. as if perception isn’t even varied between each Self. or we equate our Self to one aspect of ourself. we put so much into only one compartment and when it fails us or comes up not as we expected, it causes a feeling
comparable to crisis.
you find yourself in a state of spiraling.
it’s okay to not understand every part of our Self. or to assign more value to certain parts- to align more within those. But you Can’t Ignore the Rest. you can’t depersonalize from everything you don’t like about yourself. nor can you go through life being a mere reflection of the people you encounter to conceal What is Within. :
the more you suppress, the more you find unrest.
we are everything. the grounding, peace-invoking epiphany:
we. are. everything.
we are the people we meet. the mistakes we have made. the jobs we have. the places we go. the things we watch. the words we read. the dreams we have. the thoughts in our head. the things we value. the things we do. the baggage we bear. the goals we work towards. the passions that set our souls aflame. the blankets of warmth of what fills us with joy.
you’re not your past. you’re not your present. you’re not your future. nothing Singularly defines You. it all works Together, intricately and infinitely intertwined.
and that’s
a lot.
it’s important to establish and Know yourSelf. but it’s also just as important to acknowledge that your Self is in a perpetual state of change. because of the influence of Everything. you are constantly Evolving and becoming another Self. it’s complicated and almost
contradictory.
but isn’t that the way it was meant?
the best description of the brain- primary facilitator of our Self -as described in the title of a book by dick teresi and judith hopper, is “the 3-pound universe”2
the three pound universe.
we don’t know every secret the universe holds, and we might not ever. just as with our own of a mere three pounds. but take the time to explore yours. from there is learning and establishing yourSelf. acknowledging all that makes It. all that makes You.
you’ll find that You’re all that and more.3
1Mark R. Leary and June Price Tangney, Handbook of Self and Identity (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2014).
2Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi, The 3-Pound Universe (Los Angeles, CA: J.P. Tarcher, 1992).
3Rainbow Kitten Surprise. “All That and More (Sailboat),” track #8 on Seven+Mary, RKS Recordings, 2013.
