Who Are You?

May 10

Self-identity as a practice

I am shocked by how often I’ve felt that question as a threat. Either my presence was being challenged, or whether I had the right to exist. Even when I asked it of myself, finding an answer that felt right was a struggle.

I believe that most people answer without thinking. You reach for something ready-made—your name, what you do for work, maybe where you come from. But is that really who you are, or is that just the superficial shell of how you want to present to others?

None of those things explain who you are. Most of us express our identity through labels, experiences, and status. What if I told you that your identity is not fixed, but fluid? What if you came to believe that your identity was not what you perform, but the way you experience life.

The Performance of Identity

To this day, I struggle with social interaction. I vacillate between caring too much about the opinions of others and not caring a lick. Regardless of which end of that spectrum I’m on at any given time, I still want to present myself in the best possible light. I carefully curate and present an image that is—as much as possible—polished, competent, and congenial. It makes everyone comfortable—especially me.

I am all those things, and more, but they are not who I am—they are how I behave.

Because I have attached those behaviors to my identity, I began to feel like I was losing myself when I behaved otherwise. The problem with that is that I didn’t always feel all those things. In fact, it was a challenge to feel any of them at any time.

I came to understand that I was performing an identity, not living one.

But performance—even when it’s subtle—has a cost.

The cost is that performance asks us to maintain an image of who we are, rather than explore the realities of our existence. And over time, if we’re not careful, we begin to confuse the performance with the person.

The Truth of Who We Are

By now, you have figured out that I will move well past the surface of who we are—beyond appearance, roles, even personality. But what is it that actually distinguishes one person from another?

If it’s not the obvious things—like where you’ve been and what you’ve done, perhaps it’s something quieter, but unmistakable.

My brother, sister, and I shared the same parents, lived in the same home, in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, watched the same TV shows, listened to the same music, ate the same foods. However, each of us carries those experiences in entirely different ways.

One hardens.

One softens.

One closes inward.

One remains open, even when it hurts.

So, it cannot only be experience that defines us.

It must be something in the way we meet those experiences. Maybe what separates us, all of us, is not what happens to us—but how we decode it. Maybe it’s the meaning we assign. The story we build around it. The beliefs we allow to persist long enough to take root.

Here’s the thing: over time our interpretations begin to fashion our perceptions and our perceptions begins to influence choice. And our repeated choices quietly begin to shape how we live our lives. Eventually, it gets to the point where we lose whether interpretation drives life, or life drives interpretation.

But even that is not enough. Because there are moments—rare, but unmistakable—when people choose against their own patterns. When someone who has every reason to close… stays open. When someone shaped by fear… responds with trust.

Those moments don’t come from habit. They come from something deeper. They come from that place where we are deciding who we are.

Orienting the Practice of Becoming

“Who I am is the person becoming who I will be.”

This reframing of self-identity moves the limiting stasis of relying on the past into the fluidity of the present. It suggests that who you are isn’t something you discover once. It’s something you participate in, repeatedly. This shows up in:

the way you respond instead of react.
the moments you choose honesty over performance.
the decisions that feel small at the time but compound over years.

The practice of becoming rarely happens in the dramatic manner movies and television suggest. Becoming happens in quiet, incremental ways that often go unnoticed—even by you. But it’s always happening.

Although the shift is subtle, there is naturally an unmistakable tension that is occurring just as consistently.

We don’t perform because we’re dishonest. Acknowledging that we are becoming confronts the human desire to be known, to fit in, to be accepted, to be loved. We don’t just want these things. Whether we want to admit it or not, our spirit senses that we need them to survive.

So, we edit. We perform.

We shield others from the shadow versions of our personality. The version of ourselves that is not yet complete, and likely never will be. Instead, our fears and insecurities drive us to present something easier to receive and embrace.

Unfortunately, that presentation, tends to prevents others from becoming acquainted with the authentic you.

This does not mean that you must be an open book for everyone you encounter. The sad reality is that there are those who will use your vulnerability and transparency as weapons against you. Use discernment to judge whether the person or situation has consistently earned your trust.

The practice of becoming allows you to trust yourself to make decisions in real time, based on the present person and the present situation. This reduces the need to rely solely on the biases of your past, and the emotions you have attached to situations that feel similar.

The question isn’t whether we do this. We are becoming always, anyway.

The question is whether we’re aware of when we’re doing it, and whether we are using our intention to choose a direction.

Standing in the Question

“The truth of who we are lay in our blemishes, not the things we use to cover them up.”