Can you remember who you were,
before the world told you who
you should be.” — Charles Bukowski

One of the "fundamental endeavours of life" is to be yourself or as others might describe it, to find yourself or "create yourself". As Parker Palmer beautifully puts it "our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood".

As we grow older, there seems to be a gap between who we are (our authentic selves) and who the world expects us to be. So, we forgo our true selves and force ourselves to fit into the social systems at play. The years pass and pass, then suddenly we turn into a version of ourselves we no longer recognise. We are often blind to this transformation, only arriving at the question of "who am I?" after a long journey through undesired lands.

This experience isn't unique or rare, it's an experience that most of the human race face. Some people will resist this and remain their true self, whilst others live the life's of other people and never realise it.

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. - Lady Windermere’s Fan

I was talking to my friend recently about this. She said she found herself chasing things she didn't really want, things that didn't really drive her. All because she was following the things she thought she should follow based on parental, religous, and societal expectations. It was only when she got them she realised she was left feeling empty and apathetic. It sounded like she came to the distinct realisation, like Palmer, that "the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me."

I've certainly had periods like this before. Times when I've tried to fit into roles not meant for me, tried to adhere to some abstract norm, or mask my true feelings in a given situation.

In darkness, there is light

The latin term 'lux in tenebris lucet' (light shineth in the darkness) suggests that what we most want can be found where we least want to look. So, it could be that occasional periods of roaming off track are a good thing. These periods of uncertainty might be necessary to find out what we definitely don't want so we can discard it, before carrying on to find what we do want.

Palmer argues that we must "journey into darkness" before arriving at our true sense of self. This journey isn't straightforward or easy. It's a journey of transformation, akin to a pilgrimage.

The famous pilgrim is Abraham. When God calls upon him to found a new nation, the initial result of his journey was unpromising. He set off to Canaan, but there was fierce competition for the land. After spending a long time trying to find a place to occupy, Abraham soon lost faith and hope. Eventually, famine forced him to pull out entirely and take his family to Egypt, hundreds of miles away from the land of God’s promise. Abraham’s vulnerable position in Egypt then made him fearful. He feared that the Egyptians might murder him to obtain his wife, Sarah. Abraham told the Pharoah that Sarah was his sister so they wouldn't murder him and as a result of his deceit, he was banished from Eygpt. Finally, Abraham returned to Canaan and to the promised land.

But, it was only after a long, arduous journey filled with turmoil and undesired paths that he found what he was looking for.

Never let the child inside you die

What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits - Carl Jung

The thing that interested you as a kid can reveal a lot about who you are. As a kid you didn't know why you were drawn to something, you just were. You'd pursue that thing endlessly for hours, with obsession. This is before other people's desires and societal expectations muddied the waters and your time became dedicated to earning a living.

If I cast my mind back to childhood, the answers to what interested me were right there. I loved the way ideas and stories lit up my imagination and I loved using that imagination to be creative: usually to write. I also loved football and would practice kick-ups for 2 hours a day...longer on weekends (literally, I was obsessed).

Those things are still with me today in slightly different forms. I'm still drawn to abstract ideas and reading or writing about them and though i'm not a football fan anymore, I love health and gaining strength. The expression of my interests may have changed, but the interest itself remains the same.

There's been times when I stopped writing completely, unintentionally due to full time work or other commitments. I always came back to it. ALWAYS. and when I did, it was like rekindling a fire that never went away. That's how you know you're following the right thing: you keep coming back to it and it feels right.

So, the intersection of your interests is what you should pursue. This is the thing that "burns your soul with purpose and desire". Everyone's interests are different. Yours could be pottery, knitting, painting, acting, filmmaking. The list of opportunities are endless, it's just a matter of finding the thing that you love.

A problem with goals

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” - Hamlet, Shakespeare

The problem with goals is we invest time into the goal rather than into the individual.

From a young age, we are taught to set and aim at goals. Most of the goals we aim at aren't something we have developed, they were given to us by society, by schools and by other people. Pass this exam, get into that school, get this award, go to that university.

Goals are great but only when they serve the individual. They allow us to develop a vision for the future and journey towards it with direction. However, as Hunter S Thompson notes "we adapt the person to the goal, rather than the goal to the person." We tend to hold the goal in higher regard to the person who sets the goal.

Pay attention to what you say

Let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

There's an exercise I learnt from Jordan B. Peterson which encourages us to think about what we think and say. This requires some degree of detachment from yourself.

Firstly, start with the assumption that many of the things you say aren't yours and you don't fully believe them. There are things we have picked up on the way from various people that we come to believe are us. Once you start listening to yourself you'll realise a lot of what you think isn't actually what you think. As Palmer notes "We listen for guidance everywhere except from within."

A good way to determine whether you believe what you think and say is to pay attention to what makes you feel stronger or weaker as you say it. He specifically urges us to pay attention to what makes you feel weaker, what doesn't quite feel right. Sieve those things out and ask yourself:

• Why do you think them?
• Have you heard them from family and friends, from popular culture?
• Why are you saying them?
• Do you believe them to be true?
• Are you saying them to fit in? to feel accepted?

When you say things that you don't fully believe in, you dissociate from yourself (this is known as cognitive dissonance).

We sometimes hide what we truly think, our political opinions or belief systems, because our opinions don't align with the perceived majority or to avoid offending someone or being perceived negatively. When you do that, that's not really you. This isn't the right thing to do because there comes a time when we won't know what we truly think. We won't be able to distinguish what's us and what's other people.