Who Am I?

How many times in a lifetime will one ask themselves 'Who Am I'? I'd love to present a statistic, but I've arrived empty handed on this one. I'm here with a bunch of questions and some musings.

There's this myth that once you know who you are, life gets easier. The myth purports that being secure in this knowingness means you will know what you want to do in life. The myth mostly goes unspoken, but seems to be somehow perpetuated. The gist of it is this: Step 1- Work out who you are. Step 2- Use this information to work out what you want to/should be doing. Step 3- You've made it and now you can coast through the rest of your life, happy.

You know I truly doubt this is true. The only people I've ever come across who will tell me they know who they are, are clearly speaking from a place of ego or superficiality. Lots of people will confuse who they are with what they do. For example, someone tells you they're a pharmacist. That's what they do to earn a crust, it's not who they are, because if they really were a pharmacist they'd be born one and die the same; it's impossible to be born a pharmacist. Consider that during their lifetime they have a career change and decide to wait tables in Paris, does it make them a Waiter? Non.

I think that people clutch to the idea that they are their profession because it's safe, it gives them a sense of belonging and place. It can also mean that for a while they get to ease off on trying to answer that pesky question of 'Who am I?'.



Trouble arises when you get fired, get sick and can't work, decide you need a career change or there's some other cause for the end of a career. It's happened to me, I got sick, no longer had a job and consequently became confused about who I am and where I fit in the world. My job used to prevent these kinds of existential questions bothering me so much; it was protecting me from the daunting truth, that I didn't know who I was.

When you don't have a job you begin to notice how frequently you're asked 'What do you do?'. You realise that it's one of the first questions someone asks when they're getting to know you and it somehow gives them a reference point for what kind of a person you might be. For example your career may help another to draw assumptions about your political persuasion, how open minded or close minded you might be, how educated you are and your interests in general. Being 'Unemployed' can speak volumes, but not so much in the way that's flattering to the ego. Unemployed is just as an innacurate description of a person as pharmacist, waiter or cleaner.

If you asked me about myself I could tell you a whole lotta facts. I'd share my interests, dislikes, skills, strengths, weaknesses, star sign and more. It would certainly give you an idea about me as I am right now, but most of the aforementioned are changeable and I'd only really tell you the things about myself that I wanted to. I'd most likely skew what I tell you to create a positive impression of me, because I like to be liked.

I'm not alone in wanting to be liked, many of us have strong beliefs that aspects of ourselves are unacceptable, so we hide them. We often decide such things early on in life, from what we observe in the world around us, what we're taught and the feedback we get from others. Once we decide that an aspect of us is not ok, we are more than likely going to suppress it with great strength (so as to ensure we're liked and to get along in this world- survival). It's likely that our psyche will do such a good job of the supression that we won't even know it's happened and in our adult years we wouldn't know that this aspect of ourselves exists. Carl Jung calls it our shadow self, in Jungian psychology the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts.

I believe that to truly know ourselves we need to allow our shadow aspects to come forward and to explore their existence. The only truth I can tell you about Who I am is that I am whole. While there are aspects of my Self that linger in the shadows, awaiting invitation into the light, I am still whole. To know myself truly and honestly, would be to know each aspect of who I am- the good, bad and ugly. By the time the shadow comes into the light, it's neither good, bad or ugly- it just is. That is to know oneself truly, in our divine wholeness.