Who Are You?
Posted by myrlia, Fri Aug 28 17:08:00 UTC 2009
How do you describe yourself?
Once, I was a dancer. Ballet was what I did, and a dancer was who I was. When I met someone new, and they wanted to know who I was, I simply said I was a ballet dancer, and then they knew. When I stopped dancing, I no longer knew what to tell people, and I felt as though I had turned my back on who I was – If I wasn’t a dancer, then who was I??
My self-worth plummeted. And then I became a mother. Taking care of my children was what I did, so I was a mother. Finally, I had an identity again!
But, did I really change? Just because I wasn’t studying dance and performing, did that mean I lost all that I had learned? Did I change the way I interacted with people after becoming a mother? Did I care any less or any more about the people around me?
Although the way I spend my time has changed over the years, and with this, my “titles”, I am still the same person. So why did I feel the need for a title?
If you sign up at sites like Facebook and Gaia, they ask you to describe yourself so that other members can get a feel for who you are. For some reason, when reaching these types of sections, I could not bring myself to put together any group of words that describes me. Any time I tried to put together a description, the words became invisible cages, confining me in a ‘personality pod’. I felt claustrophobic, and limited in what I could do, or how I could act, based on those words.
Once, the titles of ‘dancer’ and ‘mother’ gave me a sense of security in who I was. Now those titles are as a confining as a pair of shoes two sizes too small.
My husband is currently going through the same ‘title’ crisis in his life. He no longer works as a programmer, and is at a loss for what to call himself. As we are in a time of reinvention, a time when people are finding the paths they are meant to take, I am sure there are many, many others currently going through this.
So, if you are one of those people, struggling to figure out who you are in this time of transformation, try to keep this in mind:
If you can describe yourself with labels, you are not letting yourself be free. Stop fencing yourself in with verbal barriers. Let go of the words we use to enclose our beings, and just be you.
