Who am I? Is this who I want to be?

 

"Why am I afraid to tell you who I am? I am afraid to tell you who I am because, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am,....and it's all that I have..." wrote John Powell in his book "Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?"

Is there a difference between who we are and what we are?

If someone asks you: What are you? would you respond the same way as if you were asked: Who are you?

Hmmmmm.

According to many philosophers, most of us will ask ourselves who we are at some point in our lives, some suggest that the question is one of the big three: who am I, where did I come from, where am I going.

We can answer the question of who we are by stating our gender, nationality, height, hobbies, hair and eye colour, marital status, what we do for work, et cetera but commonly when we ask ourselves or others who they are, we mean something else, we are enquiring as to the inner core (feelings/passions/ethics/morals) of a person and or ourselves.

Big "stuff" (as opposed to "small" stuff) like unexpected death, losing a job, natural disaster, illnesses, etc. often bring "big" questions that challenge our thinking about ourselves and the world we live in.

Unexpected events often "rock our boat" and we may find ourselves questioning ourselves and our motives in new ways.

People who have been burglarised often express lingering feelings of unease and mistrust long after the event and so do most people who have been the victims of other/similar infringements on person and property.

After I had unwittingly found two chaps ransacking my car in the middle of the day, in a well lit, much frequented parking garage, I changed my parking habits. When my brother died at age 14, (I was 12) I decided there was no God. (Although I didn't believe there was such, just in case, I wanted my feelings to be known) Upon hearing the diagnosis that my son suffers with Bi-Polar disorder, the news didn't just rock my boat, my boat flipped.

"Boat-rocking" events often challenge our perceptions of who we believe ourselves to be.

Under such circumstances we may discover whether we actually are compassionate, patient, understanding, loyal, forgiving and so forth, or merely how we would like to be.

Let me ask you: Who are you?

Do you have a clear sense of who you are?

Perhaps your answer is like mine: sometimes, it depends.

According to philosophers and psychologists, who we are is better viewed as an ongoing process rather than a fixed phenomenon (thing).

There is something called "positive disintegration" which basically means to keep what works and disregard what does not. Those parts of our identity that serves us we keep and those that hinder us we discard and by doing so we continue to evolve our sense of self.

One of the problems of us asking ourselves who we are is that we are perhaps not really able to perceive the "truth" about ourselves. Our minds are calibrated to make sense of our reality, not perceive it as it is. (There's spot in our visual field where nerves connect to the retina which is called the "blind spot", we cannot see anything in that spot, but our brain fills in the missing bits and we experience those as "real".)

There is also something called "mere measurement effect" which basically implies: the very act of asking behavioural intention questions affects the outcome.

(Ex; If I am ask myself if I am a considerate person, this probably indicates that I am a considerate person)

Let's ask another question......who would you like to be?

How close to who you would like to be and who you think you are,....are you?

If you made a list of who you perceive yourself to be, would it coincide with who your loved ones think you are?

At times it may helpful to check in with those we love to balance our perception of ourselves with those held by others.

(What I consider being tidy at times is perceived by my son as being pedantic, what I may consider as supportive may be perceived as interfering, and so on.......)

When we are kids we are often asked the question: So what do you want to be when you grow up?

Often we answer: I want to be a fireman, a nurse, a doctor etc. seldom do we answer: I want to be kind, considerate, wise, giving and so forth. There is much emphasis on what we do; after all we have bills to pay; but perhaps in a climate of growing alienation, increasing poverty and homelessness, starvation and desperation, we may benefit from focusing some of our attention on what kind of human beings we want to be?

Regardless of who you think you are, what kind of a human being would you like to be?

Perhaps we can think of ourselves as "works in progress" rather than a limited set of traits,

and as such, who we are at any point in time depends on the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Golda Meir writes this: "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

Stephen Fry offers this insight: "You are who you are when nobody's watching."

 

If per chance you would like a few pointers on how to figure out who you are, this may be helpful to you:

 * whatever is bothering/challenging/scaring/ you, write it down somewhere (read it a few days later and you will be amazed)

* when or if you do an inventory on yourself, remember the good as well as the bad...better still, try to avoid judging instead observe

* establish congruence between your thinking-feeling-behaving.....(if you think to yourself : no more junk food! then feel you deserve a treat and sink 2400 cal. in one swoop, you will feel guilty)

* ask someone you trust and respect for some honest feedback; "In your view, what do you consider to be my strengths/weaknesses?" Often others can help us become aware of aspects of ourselves from different perspectives which may assist us using positive disintegration

* try to embrace an attitude of gratitude     

 

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self."      

 (Excerpt from "Love after Love", by David Walcott)