Who are you?
And why? What are the forces that have created the person that you have become — not simply the person that you’ve been?
It’s easy to take for granted that we are who we are.
I’ve heard parents say that it’s clear from the moment they met their kids that there were elements of their personalities that were present from the beginning. I believe that for sure. And yet, there’s more, isn’t there? While we live individual lives, we are shaped by the society around us. The very small societies of our families, and our community, our schools, the city/town we live in, the state the country. We are shaped by media, but trauma, by happenstance. We are constantly shaped and being shaped.
The idea of who we are — of our identity — is broader than simply what we think of when we have to answer that question: who are you? Or, as it’s often asked at dinner parties1, what do you do?
It seems to me that feeling our way into the why that’s behind the who is a way of getting to a deeper understanding of this life.
Perhaps this is where purpose really begins to reveal itself.
Remember dinner parties?↩︎