Who Am I? Who Are You?

Alright, it's time for everyone's favorite day of the week: Existential day! Where I talk about things that will make you question your very existence and have you on the ground and crying in the fetal position.

So, without further ado, here's my existential question today:

Who Am I? Who Are You?

At some point in your life you are going to look at yourself in the mirror and stare deep into the color of your eyes, where it starts to darken around the pupil and you can see the reflection of yourself again, and you are going to ask yourself, who the hell am I?

If you don’t ever do this in your life, then I am fairly certain you have no reason to read any further. Seriously. You can just click the back button and go about your business because what I have to say is not going to register for you. Ok. Good. Now all we have left are the people who are serious about understanding themselves.

The thing about who we are is the same thing about the meaning of life. We are nothing by birth. We have no identity. We have nothing that makes us, us simply by virtue of existing. As Existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre so eloquently put it.

“Existence precedes essence.”

What does that mean? It means that first you come into existence and then you are tasked with the responsibility, freedom, and duty of creating in every moment who you are and what the authentic version of yourself is. And you do that by evaluating your life as often as possible and asking the hard questions that require honest answers.

When you get to a point that you are able to seriously question who you are as a human being, and who you want to be, that’s when the answer begins to form. But it’s a slow simmering answer that is going to take a long time to boil. It’s going to take you a lifetime to find out who you are. And just at the very end of it, that final little piece of breath that you hold on to, that’s when you are going to truly know who you are.

You are going to look back at every moment of your life, play it all back and decide what you had become because that is all that life is. It is a series of becomings. From moment to moment you are transitioning to some other you. You are never a static version of yourself. To take a quote from pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus and alter it to try to sound clever; you can never step into the same river of you twice.

But wait, before you go storming off and decrying my flippant, if witty, word play, I have a consolation gift. You don’t really have to wait until you die to know who you are. You can pretend to die a little each day and take a moment to reflect on who you are and who you should be.

I want to be clear about something. I am not literally telling you to pretend to die. Ok? You don’t have to pretend to die or do any dying of any sort. No dying. Got it? Good.

What I am saying is metaphorical. I am saying that each day you should take time to reflect honestly on the person you are. And the person you are is revealed through your actions. What good things do you do everyday. What things did you do that added meaning to your life? What things did you do that satisfied your passions and your dreams and your reasons for life?

So you answer all those questions about yourself honestly and that will tell you who you are. It will tell you if you are kind or cruel, poisonous or healthy, strong or weak, focused or a mess. And whatever you find in there is who you are. No sugar coating. No lies. Be honest and look at what you find. What you do makes you who you are. That’s it. The things you do say everything about who you are. Not what you say or what you intend or what you think, but what you do!

But this is the key part right here. If you find out who you are and you don’t like it, you can change it. That’s right. Remember, you are never a static version of yourself so there is always the change. You just have to point yourself in the right direction. Point yourself forward towards those things you want to become.

It may seem like an arduous journey, to change yourself, but it's not. It just takes you. You have to look within yourself and understand what you see. No bullshit, no ego, just you. Once you've figured out how to look at yourself unbiased, you can begin making those positive changes in your life.

Let me know what you thought about this post. I'll see you tomorrow.

Buh-bye.