Katie Kay Holmes

Ok, I’ve been prompted to discuss the issue of identity and learning or more rightly, RE-learning who we are.

Did you ever get to a certain age, found yourself divorced, out of work or somehow else at a loose end and wonder how you go there?

Have you had cause to reflect on your life and question who you are?

Consider this:

So many of our institutions seem hell-bent on making us lose ourselves to serve their purposes. I’m referring to those structures that compartmentalize the individual, making the person feel less than a person and more like a commodity or a number – then they gradually rebuild you in the form they wish to use you as.

For example: the way the army breaks a new recruit then builds them into a soldier. Or an education system that attempts a similar method to create a new accountant/scientist/lawyer etc.

Do we subconsciously also do this to ourselves over time?

In our quest to define ourselves through our relationships, jobs and possessions, do we lose the knowledge of our own essence?

Do we sometimes take stock of our lives, realize we’ve “lost” something crucial, then seek to replace it by getting busier?

For many of us, the answer is Yes, of course we do. We fill our lives up with stuff we think we need to make us perfect people. Better jobs, better friends, more money. When what we really needed was just to rediscover ourselves. Because once you re-/discover who you are, you realize you are already a perfect person. Flawed sure, but perfect. After all, you only wanted all that great stuff so you had the perfect life, right?

So ok, we get too busy and fill our lives up with stuff.

Now, I’m not saying that all that stuff is bad, or that accumulating nice friends and assets is wrong per se, I’m just saying that we need to remember ourselves first – have the base right; establish what our needs really are before chasing after this and that.

There are various techniques you we use to mentally strip away the layers that have been built up over time. The main thing is to accurately describe  then remove those things that we usually use to define ourselves. Our relationships, career, assets. I’m not saying physically strip them away (although in some cases this may help) but mentally strip them away from our own definition of ourselves. What you are left with is the core of yourself – I think someone has proposed an Onion theory, so that could be a good starting point, although the onions I’ve known never had a core – they were layers right to the middle.

Just peeling back the layers to find who you are today isn’t enough. You need to rediscover who you were as a child or teenager – who you were before you became a totally different person. Because the nutty truth is – you are the same person. You just had a bunch of stuff happen to you. Yes you changed, but the essence of you is the same essence you had when you were 7 or 17.

I urge you to seek that essence, find out who you are, even if it means losing who you think you are, and maybe then you can define again who you want to be. Re-plan your life starting from today – a good life plan that fits with you you really are.