Identity
Written by admin November 18th, 2008 in on the wayBy Thomas Merton
If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.
Source: unknown
My father Collis would grill the high school friends i brought over. Often regularly and varied guys because we were allowed to drink beer; and as well with minimal surreptition, smoke pot at home, too. (what a different parenting gestalt back in 1967.
So after the embarrassing (to about half of the guys) with “who’s your father?” or “where do you live?” or “how did your grandfather make his money?”.
Then, after all this, and maybe later to guys or girls who were older, out of college, (along with, “why do you want to study astonomy?”) Collis would ask, “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
a much better question, i realize now. much like, in my mind, “What are you living for?”
This is such an important question.. and one we need to repeatedly ask!
I find that the question “What are you Living for?” a most excellent question as it makes people think about the important part of their Lives and almost lets their secrets slip out unnoticed.
So often I am asked, “What do you do?” or “What kind of work are you in?” When I was a teacher of children with special needs, this is how I defined my life outside my life as a wife and mother and the question didn’t really bother me. In the last 6 years I have been retired because of disability, and that question is much harder for me. I am a wife, mother and grandmother… all of which identify me in terms of other people, just as my vocation identified me by the work I loved so dearly. And yet it is through these relationships, this connectedness with family and further connectedness with my friends, my church, with others along the way, that I live my life and find my meaning.
Going deeper, it is in striving to live and love out the image of the Holy One that I truly live and breathe and have my being… and again this is done through relationship, through connectedness with those I’m closest to, and hopefully those I meet each day. This is where the obstacles are felt most - trying to live into the divine within. The depression that threatens to wipe out hope and isolate me, the pain of body that seeps into mind and spirit, further threatening to isolate me, and the selfishness that tends to escalate my desires and wants to needs and discontent…. It is only when I reconnect with the Holy One, and with loved ones around me that I am again able to recognize and live into the divine within.
Following Andrew’s response above:
- what get’s me out of bed now, is what I have to do.
- what I look forward to getting me out of bed in the future, is what I get to do.
- where I am now is in transition from the have to to the get to.
Me
Merton’s words feel like hitting the sweet spot of the racket; space volume adjusted so the tuning fork vibrates with maximum resonance; the guy wire tightened so the trapeze artist can traverse; the journey between deliverance and promise; the dancer who practices endless hours until spirit, soul, body and communication with the world are one and free; grace becoming grace-fullness.
And even if my identity seems to shift with each response I remember that we each have a core identity that is studded like a cut diamond with facets; and the facets are partial answers to what I’m living for and sometimes the partial answers themselves are true and sometimes they show what is keeping me from living fully, but both responses keep me on my own journey of finally living fully enough