Identity: Dr. Who?

Here's a question:

What defines you? What makes you exactly who you are and different to everyone else?

How do you think of yourself? How would you introduce yourself to someone new?

What words would another person use to describe you? Someone who knows you well and someone who was a casual friend?

What aspects of your personality shine through for all to see, and are they the aspects for which you would like to be remembered?

When people think of you do they consider your integrity? your kindness? your creativity in whatever medium you like to use? are you the sort of person other people turn to when they want a job done and done well? are you a prop or the propped?

When they leave you do people feel encouraged? uplifted? exhausted with laughing? or worn tho a thread from your neediness? do they enjoy your company and remember you with thanksgiving? do they feel they matter to you- do they want to matter to you?

Are you the sum of your life experiences? Are you marching to an off-beat or going against the flow? Are you a Quilter? an Evangelist? an Accountant? a Teacher? a Musician? Or is what you do for a living not actually who you consider yourself to be?

Do people actually see you when they are with you or do you fade behind titles such as 'wife', 'mother', 'gran' 'secretary', 'teacher', 'so'n'so's friend', or (worst of all) 'well-meaning...but'? Do people look at you and not actually see you at all, or see a reflection of themselves which they think you complement?

And then, if you were stripped of your labels, titles, job, destination, possessions, all the things which, intentionally or otherwise, have come to define you- what would be left? Would you like the naked soul you met in the deep dark night of despair? or would you be horrified to discover you had become something unpleasant whilst you were looking the other way and getting on with your life?

When you stop and look do you see someone you actually like? or do you see someone who has fallen so far short of their own dreams, ideals, hopes, ethics, beliefs, aspirations, that it feels as though you are meeting a stranger, and not one you really wish to spend much time with?

Does it matter that you have arrived somewhere you never intended to go? Does it matter that people look at you and see someone you never intended to be? Does it matter that you have lost who you thought you were and are having to start over again?

Which is more important- that you try to live rightly by the light of your choice? or keep others happy at the loss of yourself? is there a mid-way?

Everyone wrestles with themselves at some time, or at many times, is it a waste of energy or do we learn from such times of self-doubt?

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

 

Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 1.

So when you look to yourself in a quiet moment do you recognise yourself?


PS. And does it matter?