Manager, supervisor, trainer, writer, creator, artist, teacher. These titles and more have given me a sense of purpose, of identity. They help me know who I am. My titles give me a reason to get up in the morning, they show me what I need to do with my life. But what happens when you take them away?
I end up lost.
I don’t know who I am without my work. I don’t know what to do with myself without my mission, my purpose, my telos. I remember my first year teaching, I lost my mind during winter break. Two weeks without my job and I did not know what to do with myself. I drove myself and my family crazy. I rarely take a vacation, mainly because I don’t know what to do with a vacation. If I don’t have my work, then I have to come up with another objective to achieve, another project to work on. Anything to distract me from the reality that I have no idea who I am.
The last few years have really driven this point home for me, as my growing health problems have kept me from doing all that I want to do, that I think I need to do to justify my presence on this planet. In a season where so many parts of my identity have been stripped away, I have begun to realize an important truth:
The reality is that who we are is so much more than what we do.
Who am I? What am I? There are so many days when I wonder if I am even human. With all of my intersectionality’s I have always felt left of normal. I am a minority in so many ways that I often feel utterly alone. Who among my human relations can I talk to about all of my problems that can understand what I am going through? Who is in my tribe that I can relate to? Where are the elders for me to follow? Where is my tribe, where are my people? How would I even recognize them since I don’t even know who I am?
These thoughts bring another question to mind. Do I need to know who I am? Is it necessary for me to understand myself to live a good life? For example, I know that I love tea, poetry, being creative and teaching. I know this like I know the sky is blue. Does anything else matter beyond this? Maybe that should be enough. Maybe I will never find my tribe, maybe I don’t have one. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe I don’t need to have a tribe, it could be enough for me to be a unicorn in a world of horses. Though in reality I don’t think this is the case, I believe that there are those like me, I have found a few of them. Maybe there are more.
In every relationship, if you want to get to know the person better you need to spend time with them. If I am being honest I don’t spend enough time with myself. Maybe you can relate. We use work, entertainment, social media, movies, creative projects, video games and books to keep ourselves occupied. Maybe if we stopped moving, stop doing, allowed our bodies and minds to be still, breathe and just be with our hearts and our minds for a moment we could get to know ourselves better.
“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment .”
-Eckhart Tolle
Mr. Maxwell 