Defining Ourselves

Just over a year ago, I ran the Great Bay Half Marathon with some friends from the Wicked Running Club. The route ran along a gorgeous ocean stretch of New Hampshire I never would have seen otherwise, which is what I love about long distance racing. As we coasted along on a peaceful country road, my friend Stephanie sighed aloud "This is where I feel most like myself".

One by one my friends confirmed with enviable certainty that they knew exactly what she meant about feeling at peace with herself surrounded by nature. But I remained quiet, because I am still trying to remember a time when I felt at peace with anything.

That race was over a year ago, and I’m still pondering her statement - no surprise to anyone who knows me. I can analyze, assess and debate an idea to ad nauseum. At my most annoying, I’ll do this with a decision about what to eat for dinner, but larger life questions seem more deserving of the amount of time spent thinking about them. I ponder in my car, at my desk and before my eyes close at night. I put a thought on the shelf for a few days, then take it down and ponder it again. Stephanie has long since moved on since she made that statement, but I’m still stuck on it. How is it possible that I don’t know who the heck I am?

There are many ways we define ourselves in the course of a lifetime. The government identifies us by our social security number. To our family, we are our relationship, be it parent, spouse, child or sibling. To our employers, we are our job description or resume. But those definitions rely on the influence of others, and my soul searching is more similar to ‘if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?’ In other words, who are we at our core, stripped from all outside influence? A difficult question, as our lives become so intertwined it’s like trying to extricate a bittersweet vine from an oak tree.

Since I was a child, I’ve had a feeling that I’m supposed to do something important. I don’t know what it is, or when I’m suppose to do it, but I’ll know when the time comes. There have been moments when I’ve thought "is this that thing I’m suppose to do?’ but since concluded that the nature of a ‘life calling’ is that you don’t need to question it- you instinctively know it when you see it. Which by definition means, I still don’t know what it is.

So I took a personality test to help put me on the right life path, only to find out the person I need to be at work, home and in my social life is the exact opposite of who I am when I’m alone. Which makes me wonder if too much of my life is spent meeting obligations and expectations, and too little is spent paying attention to my younger self tugging at my sleeve reminding me that I’m running out of time to fulfill my destiny- whatever that may be.

So I took a logical approach and treated my quest like a job search, complete with a resume of traits and characteristics, only to realize the essential ‘me’ really is a list of opposites- sad yet hopeful, scared yet confident, secure yet searching. In fact, I’m just about everything at any given moment during the course of a day, as unpredictable as New England weather.

And that’s when it dawns on me. The question that I have been pondering for so long- "Who Am I?" - is also the answer.

Because I am someone who is constantly wondering who I am, and what my role is in the world. And while my answer to this question is not as simple or concise as Stephanie’s one liner- it is distinctly mine. And it is definitely who I am.