Where Are The Things That Make You You?
I was talking to someone the other day about bedtime routines, and they said that they had to go to bed early because “I can’t do the things that make me me when I’m tired”. And at the time, something about that statement clanged like a gong in my mind but I couldn’t put into meaningful thoughts exactly why it made me...uncomfortable.
Obviously, if your solace is running or dancing or swimming in cold water then tiredness will prevent you from accessing that - and to be fair, if your solace is painting or reading or gentle yoga then tiredness will stop you being able to do that too. If our energy is low then we can’t do much, and when we can’t do much we can feel a bit hopeless. No, it wasn’t about being tired.
It was about “what makes me me”. What jarred me, what caused the uneasy reverberations of the gong through my mind was the externalising of identity.
Of course we live in a society that loves for us to outsource our identities. When we talk about our jobs we don’t say “I do …” but “I am …”. Capitalism drives us to put our identities into our clothes, home, cars, books, hobbies, things we need, things we want, things we are. When we’re asked to share something about ourselves we often turn to those things we love to do (paint/hike/kitesurf), to our roles as we relate to others (wife/parent/coach) - rather than what’s buried down in the root of us (values/hopes/joys).
I realised, noodling on that statement, that I didn’t want to have an identity that relied on “things” to make me me. I wanted “me” to exist within. I wanted to be able to be me if I wasn’t hiking, writing, talking, going for lunch, reading, running, doing yoga, dancing, taking a photo of the light on my dining room table. I decided that holding the self, one’s identity, inside and not tying it to anything external was The Right Thing.
And then, the next day I went for a hike and as I clambered over a rock I felt suddenly and clearly “I feel most like myself when I’m here”.
Because there are no definites, no absolutes. Everything is both. We are the insides of bodies that exist in an outside world. We sense and relate to external things, and these external things have a direct effect on how we feel and think and act. There is no shutting off from them; there’s certainly no being above them.
Maybe, instead, it’s that the external things bring to life the you inside you. That identity exists, regardless, embedded in your values and your heart and your marrow, but the outside world unlocks it and allows it to fly. For me, perhaps it’s that clambering over a rock unleashes the adventurous, strong, connected me - and also provides the stillness of mind to allow that identity to fully expand like a big balloon inside of me.
So rather than have “the things the make me me”, we instead have “the things that help me feel most me” - because when we know how it feels, we can always find it.
