Who Are We?

It’s a question you’ve most likely gone back to ponder on and changed the answer to many times. This is the one question unique to only humans: Who am I?

You’ve probably spent a good portion of your lifetime trying to answer one question.

Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash

As children, we begin to answer this question based on where we come from. Our parents, our families, our home, our city and our country.

But as we get older, we begin to put the pieces together and realize everything and everyone is connected in some form or another. It complicates the question to the point that it becomes fluid. It is constantly adapting to our transformations through life.

This has been my case, just as it has been for you.

You and I probably go to a market somewhere to buy food or what-have-you. We encounter people who we don’t know, or have never seen before. While we were children we were told to fear strangers. But as adults, that should not carry over. That is because we have learned to trust our instincts. And quite honestly, if I may, you should not let other people’s perceptions lead your own instincts.

So there you are, standing next to a complete stranger. This person may appear familiar to you because they may look like you, they may dress like you, they may talk like you…or the opposite may be the case. If you trust your own personal instincts, you probably are okay and not standing there ready to pull out a rosary to defend yourself from a demon a la “Supernatural” TV show.

One of the best things we experience in life as humans, is this feature included with our human product…it’s the need to connect and be part of a community. Even if it only lasts for five minutes, it’s completely natural.

We are individually unique humans and we cannot know the virtues of the stranger standing beside us at the store. We only have our instincts. And one thing we’ve learned about instincts is that we can be too ignorant to realize when they are flawed.

When I was a teenager, I was wearing my torn up jeans, that was my grunge style, and I was at the grocery store. An elderly man dropped a $100 bill on the floor. My instinct was to grab it and hand it to him. I often pick up things elderly people drop, and have been doing that my whole life since I was a child. Upbringing.

This man was not facing me and had a single light bag in his hand. He was walking away from me and I said, “Excuse me, sir.”

The man took one look at me and turned around and continued walking. I walked behind him and called on him again. But he walked faster so I walked faster. I then realized he was scared of me and trying to get away from me.

There was a part of me that became angry at him for being so rude. To judge me because I was some “no good teenager.” I caught myself judging him and within an instant I ran to him as he reached his car and jumped in front of him with the money in my hand extended toward him. He stopped and his face was pure fear. But I smiled.

“Sir, you dropped this as you were leaving the store.”

He was speechless but he said thank you and got in his car as I walked away.

Maybe he continued on not trusting young people. But this story is about me. What I learned. And what I learned was that people have perceptions that are different than our own. And the one thing that can be so heartbreaking is how those perceptions turn into instincts where we begin to judge each other based on these instincts.

Maybe the man had been robbed. Maybe he’d watched too much TV news. Perhaps a friend of his shared a story of how a teenager robbed an elderly person. I don’t know, and could go on forever wondering.

But what matters to me is that I am strong enough to know that my own perceptions could be altered by other people’s perceptions, the media, the opinions of my family or friends, politicians, and authority figures.

In the end, it’s my life and my story.

I go to answer the unanswerable question, the one constantly evolving with me.

Who am I?

I am not someone else. I am not who I am perceived to be. I am simply, me. I have an opportunity between the sunrise each day to discover myself all over again. To keep what I like about me and discard what I don’t. But most importantly, to treat others without prejudice. It’s not for me to judge anyone but myself. That’s who I am every day.

That is the simplest way for me to answer this question for myself. Everything else is existential. I wish I would have learned it sooner. Life is short.