Knowing Who We Are

Knowing Who We Are.

 Who Am I?

That's a question we all face during our lives.  We have a lot of things that help us define who we are.  We have families, friends, neighborhoods, hometowns, society and culture, religions (or lack thereof), schools, clubs of various sorts, class, countries, political parties, continents, a planet, and the list goes on.  It is easy for us to fall into a definition  of ourselves that is relative to SOMETHING.  Just as it is natural, and sometimes useful, to compare ourselves with those people and things around us so it is with finding out who we are.  We naturally look to our environment and see who we are in relationship to it.  Conversely, we also see the environment as being defined by it's relationship to us.  These are the obverse and reverse of our coin of our perception of the world around us.

For example we might say, "I am an American.  This is my country."  Two sentences that clearly show how identity and belonging work.  The words, I am an American, carry with them the idea that being an American, belonging to America, is an essential part of our identity.  The words, This is my country, imply a sense of ownership.  It's the same with everything on the list above and more.  We humans are trained from birth, and perhaps even genetically coded, to perceive what is around us in this manner.

For myself, the list might go something like this: I am an Anglican, a scion of the Long family, a Coloradan, an American, an amateur philosopher and historian, the husband of my darling wife, and an independent voter. I consider myself a part of, and therefor part owner of, in the same sense that membership implies a share in an organization, these things.

But that still leaves one aspect of who I am open.  Who am I without all of these things?  Who am I alone?  Without family?  Without country?  Without a religion?  Without friends?  Without all those things that make up the life that I lead day in and day out?

Well, it is not my place to presume that your answers will be the same as mine.  But perhaps the process of asking ourselves the question, Who am I without____________. (Fill in the blank.), can help us discover who we actually are sans all these things.  Help us find a deeper understanding of our own life.  Perhaps we will find that for us, there is no meaningful answer to the who am I dilemma outside of an environmental one.  Perhaps we will find that there is SOMETHING that is only a part of our interior environment that is hidden deep within us that is what we really are.  Perhaps we will find something entirely unimagined.

For those of us who try this exercise, it's sort of like taking the first steps on what Joseph Campbell called The Hero's Journey.  It may seem odd, silly, and pointless among other obstacles.  It may prove difficult to even imagine being without some of these things on our lists.  But there also might be gold hidden at the end that we can share with the world.

For me, I have to agree with Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.  This is one interesting exercise in examination of our lives.   We may already know who we are.  We may discover that we are more than we ever imagined.  The possibilities are endless.