Identity and Adaption.

Who are you?

Many people, from a very early age, know exactly who they are, and what their destiny will be.  But for those who grow up without this knowledge, their identity is a mystery.

Growing up in environments where trauma is experienced, or displacement, poverty and other disparate circumstances, growing up without people to guide them and offer explanations or an environment where identity is foisted upon them rather than being allowed to explore the world and find out for themselves who they are - are a few of the circumstances that create foundational fault lines and prevent the ability for identity and the knowledge of this to be secured.

As they grow older, they begin to accept the opinions of others and wear these identities like a patchwork of other people’s old clothing.  The hair shirt of discomfort for the indiscretions committed by previous generations, the too-large shoes of paternal forebears which they are expected to grow into.  The items two sizes too small to prevent the expression of opinion and restrict movement, every rub and pinch generating the message, ‘you will keep quiet and you will never be free’ every day.  These garments may be uncomfortable, but who would cast them off when the alternative is to have nothing to wear at all?

In just one day, everything can change, when someone who knows who they are, finds them.  For the first time in their lives, they know themselves, at least in part, and who they were always meant to be.  Sometimes this person who finds them is a friend, sometimes it’s a teacher, sometimes it’s a guide who acts in a paternal role, sometimes it’s a partner. 

The impact of this sense of being ‘found’, can be overwhelming for those who have never known who they were before.  In its own way, it causes those ill-fitting garments they wore to tear apart and fall away, metaphorically, like the shedding of a skin, and without something to hide behind, there is a sense of feeling naked and exposed.  For a time, they may try to keep putting the old clothes back on, but somehow when they fell to the floor even more of their fibres started to disintegrate.  Now they barely cover them at all.  The discomfort of them is gone for this very reason, but they no longer serve a purpose and in fact some of these items are no longer identifiable.  A scarf has become a handkerchief, a lace tied round an ankle where a shoe used to be. 

The discovery of identity is a welcome and much-needed factor of life, but it can also be a struggle.  Parts of it are always changing.  There are so many factors to identity – I am a son, I am a daughter, I am a woman, a man, a mother.  I am a teacher, a healer, an artist.  I am a friend.  There are parts of knowing who we are that are vital, but knowing who we once were, and who we are now, and the many things that used to be part of our identity that are no longer a part of this, are equally as important.  Knowing what to keep, and what to cast aside is an ability that we must develop if we wish to keep evolving.

The discovery of identity can be profound.  But it is not a riddle to be solved.  It is amorphous and everchanging, and it must be this way.  Those who would wish to see you as the product of your past must not be allowed to define who you are today, nor must you identity yourself in this way.  Whoever does this is stuck in the past, clinging to a restricted way of viewing identity and none of us should be defined by the limitations or beliefs imposed upon us by the past if we wish to be a part of the evolution of the future.  We must embrace all the potentials and possibilities that we hold and embrace the changing of identity as something that fosters growth.

When we do this, we can be that friend for someone like the one that once found us.  We can better support those who are struggling to come to terms with who they are and help them.  We must unshackle ourselves from outdated modes of thinking that do not serve us in this modern world, and realize that simply because humanity is millennia old, our identities need not be so. 

Tradition is beautiful when it serves the present and history is crucial to understanding how we arrived at who we are today.  But adaption is the key to survival and if we are to find our identity and our place in the world together, we must allow for, and encourage this in everyone, including ourselves.

'Who I was in the morning, is not who I am by the evening' ~ Wayne Dyer.

Georgina