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Swamp Thoughts

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Who am I?

This question would generally be easy to answer, but being that I’ve had a lot of time off, my mind has gotten to working at a more complicated answer. So, let me bore you with the answer.

People get caught up with the things and roles that define them: I’m an engineer, I’m overweight, I’m a girl, I’m depressed, and so forth. It is so easy to identify with these tangible objects that they seem to be who we are. Let me tell you now that who we are is something we cannot define specifically with words, it’s something that we just know, and that fact is scary.

How do we communicate the essence of who we are if there aren’t words to define it? Don’t we long to be understood? I mean, how many times have you said to yourself, “If they only knew the real me!”? And our hearts ache at the thought.

I know that I’m more than the summation of all of my roles, skills, emotions, and ideas. I can have thousands of roles depending on the people with whom I associate, I can have many different skills, my emotions change all of the time, and ideas grow, morph, or are destroyed. And all the while, I know that who I am never changes, it stays solid, and I can FEEL it humming away under this chattering mind of mine.

It would sometimes behoove us to ask ourselves the following question: “Who am I without (insert your role or ‘thing’ here)?” For example, “Who am I without my pain?” “Who am I without my weight?” “Who am I without my job?” “Who am I without my family?”

Did I hit a nerve with someone? Maybe the thought of being unemployed frightens you? Maybe the suggestion that being a mother means nothing has offended you? Let me explain something that I’ve learned: We are all capable of giving and receiving love, no matter what our role, biological or otherwise. True love, and there is only one kind, is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. We all have people in our lives that help us tap into that power. Imagine if we loved everyone as strongly and truly as mothers and fathers love their children.

Do I hear any “yeah, but…’s”? Are these “yeah, but…’s” concerned with the people who we don’t “know”? Tell me truly, how many people know the real you, the one that you ache to share?

If you fear being unemployed, know that your job is not who you are: it is a vehicle that carries you around this world. When you change cars, you don’t change who you are. You just ride in a different car. I could go on and on with analogies and metaphors (and oh, do I love doing such things!), but I’m gonna step down from my soap box, and work on my next blog, which concerns recounting the events that have led me to where I am today!

2 Comments:

  • This was a very thoughtful post. See, this is why you are so admirable of a person. If I tried to explain all this to my parents, I'd stammer, and it would come out unclear. They constantly tell me my job is the most important thing in my life, and it's heartbreaking. I find what you say to be profound and eloquent.

    I struggle with all the things you mention. My job's going horrible - but I'm scared to quit. I have all these interests - but few people who appreciate them. I go to speed dating time and time again, fearing rejection but with hope springing eternally for any match. It's like: "I don't want clever conversation, I never want to work that hard. I just want someone I can talk to. I want you just the way you are" Thanks so much for your post.

    I've posted similar things on my blog, but much less eloquent.

    -cybergalen

    By Blogger cybergalen, at 5:21 PM, March 30, 2006  

  • Yeesh, I'm gonna have to find out how to remove that 2nd comment! Anyway, yeah, I find that verbal communication is so limited! I don't know what my path is, but I'm trying not to live in fear. I had this realization on the plane one day that, you know, I might die today, in a fireball of screaming people hurtling toward the ground, and that kinda freaked me out for a couple of seconds. And then, a calmness came over me, and I knew I was gonna die doing what I wanted to do, instead of waiting to do what I wanted to do. So, I still didn't want to die, I just knew that if I did, I was doing something that I enjoyed (traveling around the globe!).

    By Blogger swampglow, at 7:45 PM, April 03, 2006  

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