Who Was I? Who Am I? Who Will I Be?

One of my sisters recently shared this photo in our family WhatsApp group. It was a timely photo because it arrived at a time when I was thinking a lot about my identity. I am at an identity crossroads of sorts, where I have to choose between the familiar comfort of who I have always been and who I want to be. At a surface level, the answer is easy - I should be who I want to be. But in reality it seems more complex. Judging by my little brother being a baby, I want to guess this photo is from 1999 and I was no more than 5 years old. Yet at 5, I had that same smile that never seems to leave my face - for better and for worse. Which makes me wonder, how much do we really change?

Through the many years of therapy in my early twenties, I have come to understand that my ever present smile is rooted in survival. Yet I wonder, did I learn that as I grew older or did 5 year old me also smile to survive. It would take a book to outline the ways in which my smile has assured my survival: from befriending child abductors in my village, to pacifying violent family members, and buying myself the time I needed to process through pieces of news that were so emotionally heavy it would overwhelm me if I confronted them right there and then. Yet this way of responding is inconsistent with the adult I want to be.  It might have helped me survive, but it clearly won't help me thrive and live my best life.

Don't get me wrong, I have made giant leaps of progress over the years. For starters, my people-pleasing tendencies have significantly reduced and I no longer shy away from conflict. I have been finding my voice and learning to use it. Yet as I have been reminded, we are communal beings and part of finding our voices include learning to make space to hear the voices of the people in our lives. This is where it gets complicated. I realize I still have a lot of work to do in finding that perfect balance between centering my voice and centering the voices of others. At the core of this part of the journey, is the conflicting values between the collectivistic philosophy of my upbringing and the individualistic one of the world in which I became an adult. 

I have always had a strong sense of self, but that self was deeply rooted in a collective consciousness. Perhaps I had learned this from my mother and the world around me. My mother was that person who would share our last bit of flour with our neighbors so they won't starve tonight even though she had no idea where our meal the next day would come from. Yet we were always fine. Of course I have learned the hard way that this way of self-sacrificing for the good of a community is not sustainable and in the long run not good for anyone. But the idea of being invested in the survival of your kin is one that resonates with my soul. So I continue to seek wisdom on how to be invested in the survival of my kin without excessive self-sacrifice. 

My impression of the ideal self in this world where I have become an adult, is a self that is rooted in an individualistic consciousness who happens to "care for others". It is a world where we have our volunteer experiences on our LinkedIn profiles - and I am guilty of this as well. It is a world where we tweet hashtags as forms of activism and use social media for virtue signaling so that we can be perceived in a certain way for our ultimate individual gain - even if that gain is feeling good about ourselves and the positive change we think we have in the world. But in all of this, we are the heroes of the stories. I refuse to be socialized into this way of being. Not that I think it is wrong, but just that it does not resonate with my spirit.

Clearly I cannot simply continue being who I was because I am in a different world that has different values and norms, but I don't yet know how to be who I want to be. So I smile because that is my loading animation for when my brain is processing information about itself but can't make sense of it in the moment yet. A brief survey of friends who have known me from across different points in my life has revealed that this is not new behavior, but it has different interpretations in the different cultures I have called home. So perhaps the title of this piece is as misguided and hard to follow as the article itself. 

At least the picture of 5 year old me is comforting. I was a beautiful baby and am now an even more gorgeous adult, indicating that I consistently get better with time. So as much as I wrestle with these questions and character limitations, I have hope that in time I will be the man I aspire to be. Until then, I will continue to extend myself the same compassion I have learned to show and continue learning to allow others to help me carry the burden too. After all, my sense of self is rooted and will always be rooted in a collectivistic consciousness.