2014-0124 Who Am I?

Hi All –

Who are you?

This seems like an odd question, doesn’t it?  But my real purpose in starting off this way is to nudge you along the path of self-exploration and discovery. 

How would you answer this question?

 Certainly, if you and I happened to meet for the first time and I posed this question to you, you might think of me as a rude person.  After all, it seems like I am somehow judging you on some basis, maybe by the type of work that you do or did, or by how successful you have become, or what family connections you have or maybe by the type of personality you have. 

It seems an impossible undertaking to condense oneself into a paragraph of facts.  The result is woefully inadequate.   Something important is missing. 

OK, let’s pretend that I’m at a party given by the company where my wife, Kathleen, works and somebody I’ve never met comes up to me and asks “Who are you?”  I would naturally assume that this person knows my wife so I might reply “I’m Kathleen’s husband, Kevin, and I work down the street at Lockheed in the IT department.” 

Does that reply describe me? 

Now let’s pretend that I’m at another party at our children’s elementary school, perhaps celebrating the Harvest Festival.  Another parent approaches me and asks “Who are you?”  This time I might reply “I’m Kevin, Kathleen’s husband.  Our kids are Scott and David.  Scott’s in 6^th grade and David’s in 1^st. “

This is a somewhat different aspect of who I am.  Neither description describes me fully, does it?

On the other hand, suppose you are meeting somebody.  What do you want to know about them? 

It is a good exercise, . . . no, let me restate that.  It is a good practice to do a self-evaluation from time to time.  Ask yourself “Who am I?”  Can you describe yourself? Do you know everything about yourself?  If you are with your co-workers, are you the same person than if you are with your church group?  Do you act the same way?  Think the same way?  Talk the same way?  Voice the same opinions?

When I turned 60 . . . (yes I know. You’re surprised at that number when I obviously don’t look a day over 75.)  Anyway, when I turned 60, I immersed myself in a bit of  introspection and wrote some of my thoughts down on what it felt like to turn 60.  In a way, it was an oblique description of myself at that time. One of the topics I addressed was paths – the roads that we travel along through life.  I’ll share that with you now. 

Turning Sixty - Paths

I see it more and more in the people I meet.    Most of them are younger than me now and I guess that is as it should be.   In their polished faces, I see the reflections of old men: the absent father, the genial mentor and the grizzled sage as well as the storybook grandfather.  That is how they begin to see me.  I am more and less than those things but that is how they want to see me. 

I see them moving in their various manners along the well-trodden paths prescribed for them since early childhood by parents, schools, society.  Here is the path of “Get Ahead” and here is the path of “Go to College” and here is the path of “Get an MBA” and over there is “Get Married”, you know, the bridal path.   We follow several paths at once.  At the end of the path, we’ve been told, we’ll get a cap with a gold tassel, an engraved coffee mug and a certificate attesting to our status as a “pillar of society.” 

So we have a lot of people following the same paths – it gets crowded and they jostle each other all the time. Some are pushing ahead and soon are out of sight.   A lot of competition develops.   Some drop behind for a day or possibly 10 years.  Some wander out into the meadow where there are flowers and the drone of bees.

At some point the path isn’t so clear anymore.  Here and there thistles are growing, forks appear in the path and the signposts, eaten by decay, have fallen over.  They still stumble along asking “Am I on the right track?  Shouldn’t I have been promoted by now? ”

So, if you are one of these people, you push on blindly in the direction you were told to go until one day you may notice that your guts are lying by the side of the path.  They won’t go any further with you and there they are in the dirt with the ants milling about.  Or maybe it’s your head lying in the dust and you feel the migraines begin every Monday when the alarm goes off and it’s time to go to work. 

This can’t be good.

It’s probably time to wander in the meadow.

I stop to look around me.  I am alone in a meadow that stretches out in all directions. The faint remnant of the trail I have been following still is visible and I have been carried by momentum along it.   I find wood, paint and a brush.  I make a signpost and draw arrows going in all directions.

I spot a grove of trees ahead that might be interesting.  The light is fading and I have maybe 20 years to get there.

Have a good week, everyone!

Kevin

Reminder:  If you are unsure about the meaning of the idioms used in this message, please refer to "Idioms, Figures of Speech, and Proverbs" posted in August.  An alternative is to look at http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com