Who Are You?

The question "Who am I" rarely comes up in modern fast-paced lives. It seems illogical not to know who you are. After all I am "me" and who else can know me any better then I do? I'm the closest "person" to myself. I know all of my secrets, all of my thoughts I contemplate in the privacy of my mind. I've known myself my whole life.

Notice how many "my" and "mine" there are in description of "I"?

I know my name, the year of my birth, my nationality, my profession, my social status, my talents and my shortcomings.

But have I ever looked at myself directly? Or is every word I can say about myself only an arrow pointing towards me? As long as I'm fixed on the arrow, I might never see what it is pointing at. To see the moon someone is pointing at you've got to take your gaze off the finger and look beyond. You've got to trust your intuition and look into the distant darkness. You've got to let go of safety of the known.

Working a few very different professions I noticed neither one is really me, each one is only a role, a costume I put one when people around me expect me to.

Staying in one role makes our view of who we are more concrete; when we try on many different roles it is much easier to see neither one is really me. If your professional position inspires others to treat you with a hight level of respect and authority, try taking on an opposite role. It might be a lot to ask, but serving others for a day wouldn't kill you. It's a very small price to pay for getting to know yourself a little better. If you wear housekeeper's uniform day after day, year after year, try dressing up in a business suit and notice how you are treated differently, notice if you treat yourself differently.

Travel away from the people who know you from your childhood. It is difficult for your family and childhood friends to see you in any other role other them the one they already assigned to you years ago.

If that is not a viable option, join a club you'd never think of joining: touch rugby, motorcycle club, amateur choir, aspiring painters... take a cooking or a language course... Go out of your comfort zone. Step out of the circle of the known you drew around yourself.

We are waaaay larger then we allow ourselves to be, the world is much wider then the little piece of it we call home.

And ask yourself every single day: "Who am I?"