"Everything flows and nothing abides,
everything gives way and nothing stays fixed."
~Heraclitus
I used to define myself as an anxious person with a strong aversion to change. Definitions, it seems, are subject to revisions. And identity is not static. My reflections over the past few years have led me to this surprising discovery. There have been dark times, when I have looked in the mirror and not known who was looking back. How can I still be struggling with who I am, I miserably wonder. I'm 25, or 27, or 30 and shouldn't this age warrant a clear and definite sense of self? Filled with panic or dread, disappointment or simply exhaustion, I would try to determine how I would find myself...again.
My most recent identity crisis arose out of my decision to move abroad. I just don't feel like myself were words that reverberated in my mind for months. They begged the question What is my self? In times of confusion and certain loss, it is often our close friends and family who reflect back to us who we are. And now, as I write this, Linds texts me as she has just left Grandpa who is in his new home, Edgewood care facility. As she was leaving he told her he didn't know who he was anymore (because the dementia has been slowly stealing his identity for years now). Speaking of Natalie and Giatta, he added, "I love you. That helps clear it up for me. Those little girls help clear it up for me." But when our loved ones are thousands of miles away, we are challenged to mire through our mind's own muck in solitude.
There have been nights these past 9 months where I have laid awake scrolling through photos and videos, squinting into the eyes of the Jamie that smiled at me from the screen on my phone. Who did she know herself to be at that moment? Is that still me? These questions have caused a great deal of discomfort. It has been time and the formation of new, authentic friendships that have led me back to feel like myself once more. So then, how do I define myself now? I have shed like an unnecessary cloak the above description, and, it seems, that definitions are best left in dictionaries.
Our selves are impermanent. Life is impermanence. And while I haven't found complete peace with these notions, I have chosen a life that breeds even more change than before.
In relationships, I seek soulful connections. Whether the relationship is platonic, romantic, or familial, I will petition for your authenticity. I will yearn to know your truth. I will entreat you to muse with me. life. love. faith. purpose. mystery.
I am guilty of trying to hold on to experiences...people...moments that I find delightful and pleasing. To close my fist around divine hours and press them to my heart, hoping that if I squeeze tight enough I will be able to manipulate Time and Space and reside forever with what is bringing me joy. And then time and again the Universe is here to teach me that I am not meant to grasp and own Life in this manner.
To define certain experiences, moments and people as wholly good and beautiful and others as entirely bad and frightening is to add to my own suffering. I know this, and I keep hoping that a few more hours of meditation, or of practicing yoga, and I will reach some higher state of being, some intense moment of enlightenment where letting go and accepting each moment for what it is and what it brings will become so much more a part of my nature.
Buddhist monk, and author of When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron reflects "That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment."
So we must learn to shift with life, breathing into the deep, sometimes dark, sometimes dualistic emotions days inspire within us.
While it is futile to try to place an unrelenting grasp on moments, relationships, experiences these all do indeed stay with us in a sense, as they become woven into the very tapestry of our evolving beings.
I conclude here that, as all in life is, my self is also impermanent. I will continue to evolve through the days and years. Through hours of reflection. Though of two things I am certain: my love for dark chocolate is unconditional and eternal. And I will feel everything. deeply.
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