I don't quite know how to answer the question ‘who are you?’ because I don't really know myself. We kind of just wake up one day and it goes from there. We have memories of what it felt like to be a child. Looking at baby photos of yourself gives you a sense of the path you've taken from being in the photo, to looking at it. Your story.
At every point throughout life, we always ‘feel’ the same even though everything around, and about us, is changing.
We're constantly morphing, moulding, and evolving in response to the chaos of the world that flows around us. How can you point to one drop in a stream and say ‘that’s me!’?
Everything that has, or will, ever exist, is part of a process. An undying dance of cause and effect within which we exist as momentary blips of consciousness. Flashes of light between two eternal nights.
Reality appears solid and permanent, but that's only the case due to being locked in our human perception of time. Everything is always melting. Our bodies constantly shed and replace cells like a city constantly demolishing old districts to construct new ones.
If you were to replace every component of a car down to each nut and bolt, would it still be the same car?
Even our thoughts come and go like gusts of wind. A wish for this, a fear of that, an image of ourselves that is destined to melt away as we age. Every time something is learnt, a perspective is changed, or something is experienced, we have changed.
The version of you before your mind was updated no longer exists.
There is only you now.
We often think of death as a frightening force at the end of our lives, but the reality is that the person who started reading this will be dead by the time you finish.
We are transformed by every experience we have, and we never stop experiencing.
While I was planting some tomatoes, I thought about how sleeping within each seed is the potential of every root, leaf, and fruit that my little tomato plant will grow. But it's how this potential intertwines with the world around it that will determine its growth.
Will I remember to water it?
Will the weather be warm enough?
Does it have enough space to grow?
My little plant knows it's a tomato plant, so all it needs to do is try to tomato as best as it can and have faith that everything will work out.
We come into the world in the same way, except we have no idea ‘who’ we are. Dormant within each of us lie talents, passions, and potential that if awoken can teach us about ourselves and show us where we’re meant to be.
But it's luck of the draw where you're planted.
Maybe you're loved and supported, shamed and neglected, or forced to play the role of someone you're not. As products of our circumstances we constantly adapt our minds and actions to conform to the expectations of our predicament.
Whether it's a desire to be accepted, to avoid pain, or to not be judged, we contort ourselves into things we're not. Smothering who we are with who we think we should be. The society of the time has a constantly changing expectation of what's ‘normal’ which we internalise from fear of exclusion. Adopting masks that slowly suffocate the spark within us that yearns to burn with the flames of passion.
We hold ourselves back from being in the world as we authentically are because we imagine that the human hordes won't accept us. But the reality is that there's only one person that limits us, and they live behind our eyes. Unlike tomatoes, we have the choice to seek out and wake our sleeping potential.
Who would we be if we gave ourselves permission to follow our dreams?
Who are you beneath your conditioning?
When describing who we are we always default to our story. A tale comprised of moments we remember from which we mould our identities. But I feel like that ain't it. I feel like I am who you are in the sense of an awareness, just doing its thing and being aware.
There's no real way to articulate it, but it's why we always ‘feel’ the same while we move through our lives. Or as life moves through us.
We usually think of ourselves as ending at the edge of our skin, but we don't exist without the external world. We rely on air as much as our lungs to breathe it.
Our bodies are systems of biological processes that are functions of greater systems within and without our understanding. Our awareness absorbs the world through our senses as we experience our lives, incapable of experiencing nothing.
In a sense, everything that's happening is only happening because of where you are. Light only shines because of your eyes seeing, vibrations only sing because of your ears listening, and things are only sweet because of your tongue tasting. You are the point at which your body's internal world and the external world meet. You are the moment. Watch the trees wave to you, hear the birds sing to you, feel the sun smile at you and reciprocate it.
It's beyond a privilege to exist as the only one of you that there will ever be.
How much of yourself will you get to see?
Everything around us will change, but we will always feel the same. A choice must be made between paddling on the surface of your conditioning, or diving into the depths of yourself and discovering what lies dormant. I feel almost an obligation to do the latter, but then again, I might be full of shit. If all we have is a momentary blip, I can't think of a better way to spend it.
