I started a post the other day. My intention was to explore identity. I began to write down all the things I am - male, Caucasian, Wisconsinite, citizen of the United States, etc. - all of my descriptors. I didn't finish. But what was curious to me was that most of the descriptors weren't my choice (or, if they were, they were made before I was born and I don't remember). It's not my fault I live in Wisconsin. I've tried to leave a few times, but I keep coming back, and for 6 months out of the year I ask "Why?". I don't recall asking to be born a white male, and I did not give my consent to be baptized (although I did give my consent to be confirmed in the Lutheran church). I learned English at a young age because that's what was spoken around the house. My uncles, on the other hand, were bi-lingual - when playing cards, they often spoke in German (probably because they knew I wouldn't understand). So where I live, my first language, my citizenship, my first religion - they make up who I am, even though I didn't choose them. I found out pretty early on that I wasn't very happy with who I thought I was. It took a long long time to change that state of mind.
Humans love to identify and classify. It's how we make logical sense of the world in which we live. That's a rock; it has certain attributes because it's a rock. There's a tree; it has certain attributes because it's a tree.
But then we try to classify ourselves. Some people have no problem with that. Some folks proudly state exactly who they are, even though what they're claiming was something that was foisted upon them before they knew they had the power to choose. Our egos need an identity in order to thrive. Strip away all of the things we think we are, and the ego has nothing for which to live.
I had a Boston Terrier for about a year. Cute little guy, but he didn't know he was a little dog (he weighed 20 pounds, but was very strong). He liked to go to the dog park and run with the big dogs. Most of them tried to ignore him - he didn't care. I really loved that dog. Domesticated dogs don't have an identity other than what we give them.
I don't think a wolf knows it's a wolf. I don't think an oak tree knows it's an oak tree rather than a pine tree. And an oak tree is probably not proud to be a mighty oak because, when it was just an acorn, it knew it had no other choice (if it knew anything at all).
In the helping professions, we avoid identifying patients with their conditions. There's good reason for this - the cancer in room 420 is more than a cancer - she's a mom, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a journalist. When the person who lives with alcoholism isn't drinking, he's more than an alcoholic - he's your neighbor, someone's son, and he might even be your doctor. The person who lives with mental illness may be symptom free for months or years; why call them the manic-depressive or schizophrenic?
Yet we have this urge to identify and classify, and, the narrower our minds, the more rigidly we adhere to the names we give others. Remember being 8 or 9 years old, and going grocery shopping with mom, and seeing your homeroom teacher in the grocery store for the first time? Wasn't that a trip? There was a great amount of confusion - "what's she doing here? She's my teacher!" We did not understand, at first, that teachers have lives outside of the classroom - that they've got spouses, and homes, and maybe children, and they gotta eat too! It's usually experiences like these, and reading or watching movies, that broadens our minds to the existence of other peoples and different ways of doing things. I've mentioned this before - when I went to prison, I discovered that 'murderers' didn't murder 24/7, and 'thieves' didn't steal 24/7, and most of the 'drug dealers' were out of business - at least for the time being. All of the people I met in prison had aspects that weren't criminal offenses. All of them were human (and, I suspect, still are).
Alcholism, addiction, and major depression are all conditions that have a narrowing affect on the minds of those of us that live with these conditions. For me, my mind narrowed to the point that life sucked, living sucked, the whole world sucked, I'm useless, and my only options are to drink and/or die. So, a large amount of recovery for me has been allowing my mind to re-broaden - to begin to see that I do have options and choices, and that I'm not locked into a certain way of being. In fact, I consider myself very fortunate that I had to get to the point where I had to surrender just about everything I thought I knew about myself in order to live. The world I live in today is vastly different than the world I lived in 3 years ago (and very much different than the world in which I grew up).
There was a CEO who was in need of a CFO (chief financial officer) so he picked 3 CPAs to interview. He asked the first one, "What is 2+2?" The first CPA answered, "4." "Thank you," said the CEO, "you may go." The CEO did the same with the second CPA, with the same result. When the CEO asked the 3rd CPA "What is 2+2," the CPA replied, "What would you like it to be?" The CEO said, "You're hired!"
And that's what I feel like today - the 3rd CPA - because each day I have greater choice on who I want to be today. Who I am is how I show up. Or, how I show up is who I am. I am not bound by my past, nor am I bound by those things that I am which I did not consciously choose. I'm not even bound by the language I learned, porque aprendà a hablar otro idioma.
I'm not bound by religion, and I'm not bound by my disorders.
A side benefit of this broadening of mind I've experienced is I judge people less at face value than I ever have before. I can see more of the whole person than I've ever been able to before, and I now appreciate people for who they are. This is part of what makes life an adventure. To paraphrase Whoopi Goldberg, if everybody were Whoopi Goldberg, the world would be a pretty boring place.
I don't know who I am today, other than a living, breathing embodiment of my Creator, living to become more of who I really Am. And more and more I recognize my relationship to my brothers and sisters. I'm a part of the Human Family, and we're all here trying our best to find our way. For me, it makes what used to be a really frightening world into a pretty nice place to live.
Namaste,
Ken
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