Who are we?

Who are you?

And me? Who am I?

Well from what I can gather, I am Grace. I am a sister, daughter, friend, teacher, student, Brit, vegan, linguist, girl/woman (yes, I do believe I am both). I am often adventurous, I get insecure, I strive to be a good listener to my friends, I can be insensitive, I try to be brave, sometimes I’m not. But do these words define me? Do they contain the essence of my existence?

Recently, as I sat cross-legged doing my best to look like a tranquil yogi at my teacher training, I was asked to reflect on the question: who are you? The first feeling that came up for me was frustration. I have always got stuck at these prompts towards self-summary - the kind you find in job interviews and ice-breaker activities. I felt disturbed and irritated and didn’t know what to say.

When I was younger, maybe 7 or 8, I remember passively listening to a conversation between my aunty and my grandma about cities and countryside and the types of people who suited living in these different environments. They made predictions about my sister and I; about where we would live in the future, probably without realising how much their words would stick with me and come to shape the very idea I’d have of myself. They said that my sister (who at the time would have been barely 5 years old – who knows what they were basing their estimates on) would live in the countryside and that I was better suited to city-living. At my young I age, I really absorbed their evaluation of me. My idea of myself grew to be shaped around my supposed propensity for a fast-paced, urban lifestyle, and this throwaway comment that wasn’t even directed at me became a defining feature of who I thought I was. I day-dreamed of a future filled with city stereotypes; brief cases and take-out coffee cups and late nights in cocktail bars, and I awaited the day I could realise my identity in the metropolis where I belonged.

As I grew older I started to reflect more and more on my identity, as all children probably do (maybe this is what marks the transition from childhood to adolescence – the birth of the ego and the corresponding need for a distinct selfhood). I remember wanting to curate all of my traits and preferences so that they fit into a neat package, trying on different archetypal identities and slotting all of my characteristics together like Tetris shapes. I thought a lot about labels. The more I forced myself into a cut-and-dried mould, the more I recognised the grey area that lay between my definitions of who I was and who I wasn’t. As much as I tried to define myself as a certain kind of person with suitable corresponding characteristics, I kept finding exceptions in my deepest truths, eventually arriving at the conclusion that labels are perhaps not so appropriate for human beings. I very much agree with my younger self, which is perhaps where my frustration came from when I was asked to meditate on that question: who are you?

After some allocated time to reflect on this annoying question, I turned to my friend to answer the three follow-up questions: what words would I use to describe myself, where did I learn these words, and how do they feel in my body. I have spent a long time resisting the urge to live by any fixed idea of who I am or who I should be, so I found it difficult to present a list of words to sum myself up. I came up with a few, most of them words I have heard other people use to describe me – compliments or critiques that came up in arguments. It’s interesting how our idea of who we are revolves around the image that others paint for us; it reminds me of the strangeness of never possibly seeing your own face as it really is. None of the defining words I came up with felt good in my body. The critiques pricked me, sharp and painful, and the complimentary words strained me like an ideal that would always leave me falling short.

I don’t know if you can ever really feel like the same version of yourself all the time. Your thoughts, feelings, tendencies and tastes all shift over time, year by year and even day by day, until you don’t recognise or identify with the person that inhabits your body. In time, something that you used to see as a cornerstone of your individuality can grow into an unwelcome imposition that constrains your self-expression. The expectations you have of yourself become outdated and inappropriate. Yet we cling to them, because who are we if not our familiar, distinct selves?

Well, we are many things. We are a reflection of the things we see around us. That which we notice, that which we appreciate, that which makes us move, that which lights our fire. We are our family, we are our history, we are our future. We are what we like, and sometimes what we don’t. We are our memories, and our imagination. We are the noise we hear around us, the energy we feel inside of us, and the earth that lies beneath us. It is possible that we are all of the things, but it doesn’t matter if we aren’t - these are just words after all, and the essence of us is so much more than any words could possibly portray.

Only you know how it feels to be authentically you: to laugh as you, to love the people you love, to navigate your way through unknown territory and to come out the other side with the feeling of having grown just a little bit stronger. Get acquainted with that feeling, for it is the only thing that can come close to guiding you through the lifelong challenge of being yourself.