What if You Don't Have to Know Who You Are? For Jodi.

I started being desperate to figure out who I was when I first left home for college and realized I did not fit with the other freshmen at Kenyon College. I realized I was supposed to be somewhere else, somewhere people recognized that I was as special as my mother always said I was. I tried four colleges before I realized it wasn’t the college that was the problem. This realization didn’t help much. I was now a problem on a stage with a spotlight on it, my parents and friends and therapists watching me, trying to figure me out.

For the next few decades, I’d get a terrible feeling any time I’d be in the car with someone and we’d drive by a business with a “help wanted” sign. “You could work there,” the person inevitably would say, and I’d think, yes, I could, and my stomach would drop. Did could mean should? I didn’t want to work in a bookstore. I didn’t want to work at a 7-11. Why did they think that was a good idea? Who did they think I was? Maybe those were things I was supposed to do. Maybe these friends and family members saw the real me and I didn’t. But if that was the real me, I didn’t want her. I loved books, but the last place I wanted to work was what to me was a kind of church. Working in a bookstore would ruin the magic of the place. I’d know its guts. And, ultimately, I wanted to be the person who wrote the books, not sold them.

When Joe Loya asked 22-year-old me what was one thing I would never do, the bottom of my life fell away because, as I sat across from a man who had been in prison, a man who had stabbed his father in self-defense, I realized I’d do anything if pushed hard enough.

Not having borders does not feel liberating. We put children in playpens for a reason. To keep them safe. To show them there are limits to how far they can travel without being hit by a car or stolen by another human being. (But we can learn to tolerate really, really wide borders, like from one end of the universe to the other. Why would we want to do this? Because it’s who we are.)

I wanted someone to hand me a name tag with a few defining adjectives and my purpose. I needed to know who I was so I could know what to do next. What career to have. Who to marry. What car to drive. What shoes to wear. Birkenstocks? Loafers? Heels? Was I the girl next door or a ruthless disaster?

What if the question to ask is not Who am I? but What do I want to do now? What if first world privilege is the death of us? The death of real spirit? If I see my neighbor has his foot stuck in the door, I’m going to forgot my problems and go help him get free. Why? Because I’m human. Imagine if I just waved as he screamed and I called out, “I’d love to help you, but I have no idea who I am!”

Who gives a shit who you are anyway?

The important thing is what you do.

I don’t mean this in a manic, You better get a lot of things done in this life, young man, young woman! kind of way. I mean it in a we have been fed a story way. Can you imagine if every morning the flowers had a freak out session as they decided to bloom or not because they weren’t sure that was really who they were? I can’t do it, the daffodil shrieks, choking itself with its own leaves. I was supposed to be a tulip!

What does it mean to bloom as a person? It means you listen to big mind. It means you put down your phone and you go into the grocery store and you stand in the produce section and you listen to big mind as you silently ask, What do I want to eat?

Choice can be such a buzzkill. I don’t know what I want!! There are ten kinds of oranges. Four kinds of grapes and something green I don’t know the name of. What if I chose the wrong thing??

What if there is no wrong thing? What if we are these little blips of light, fireflies, and we have a span of time to flit about the world and make things a little brighter? What if going to the grocery store is just practice listening to big mind? What if all of life is?

Who needs you to define yourself anyway? Someone is trying to put a dog collar on you if they are telling you they have no idea who you are. Pay attention, Dude. Watch me. Figure it out. I can’t tell you. That would be like a wave trying to tell you its name.

One reason I was so desperate to figure out who I was when I was younger (like, last week) was because I puzzled so many people. I realize now that’s because I’m adopted and have a brain that works in ways that is more fragmented than normal and because I’m creative and don’t color within the lines all the time. People want to know the rules with me. They want me to tell them who I am so they can predict what I will do next and then feel good about themselves when they are right.

I first heard about big mind from the yoga teacher Erich Schiffman. He explained that we are always online with spirit, big mind, and if we listen, we will know what to do. If, however, you have a head full of voices—parents, teachers, friends, it’s like you are at church and have your ear against your neighbor’s stomach instead of listening to the preacher. Or it’s like you turned on the radio and then put your head in a bucket of water.

What I am trying to say is that you know who you are. You are the flower that opens to the light. You are the wave that crashes on the shore. You are blue sky. You are the cracks in the sidewalk. You are the crying child, the wild donkey. You are the space between things. You are the hole in the donut. You are a secret, a whisper, the ears on a cat.

People are going to try to put you in a box so they know how to sell you stuff you’ll want to buy. People are going to try to put you in a box—you are going to try to put you in a box—because the undefined is so unpredictable!! If you don’t tell me who you are, what if you surprise me! What if you wear red when I was certain you would wear green?

We want to be wild, but we are so frightened of our own power, and so we wear name tags and girdles and shoes so tight our feet bleed.

What if you have no idea who you are and you go out into the world tomorrow just to discover what you'll do next as you search for things that feel in alignment with big mind, the radio in your head, the feeling in your heart of I like this or I don’t like this?

What if we are here on the planet to serve, not to figure out who we are? Is that so horrible? Is helping your neighbor free his foot really such a lousy way to spend your time?

You can’t corner a butterfly without eventually killing it.

But you can watch it fly.