How I aim to define myself
I just turned 42. I've never been that lost, and it never felt that good!
I’m afraid I’m a geek, a nerd, or whatever you call those for whom 42 isn’t just a number between 41 and 43.
As I just turned 42, I thought it would be fun to reflect on how I aim to define myself.
Let’s start on the road, as it represents the journey, which is… life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I drive a Normcore white Kia Cerato base model without a single option except the Safety Pack, which wasn’t an option. I set up cruise control to the exact speed limit, and sometimes I spice it up, say 74 km/h on a 70-limit road. I hate tailgaters and reckless drivers, until...
I take my motorcycle for a spirited ride, pushing it twice the speed limit on the same road, gifting myself a GTA two-star wanted level treatment, tailgated by red-blue sirens that swallowed half of my license points and spat back a four-figure fine. Police are no friends, and neither are cyclists. We call them lycra on our bikers group and despise them for paralyzing our roads, until...
I put on my whole black lycra outfit for a peaceful bicycle ride, raging on both cars and motorcycles – FUCK-THEM-ALL; same atrocious combo of noise and pollution ruining my bucolic setting.
The road is what, 0.7% of my week? And I already embody three distinctive personas, with mindsets and behaviours that don’t align.
I could do the same exercise with what I think, how I eat, who I hang out with and so on, but you get the idea. It’s complicated.
You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.
– Rumi
The good news? I’m fine being that normie hooligan in lycra, and ten thousand more weird personas and worldviews.
What I don’t want: to be easily defined
It’s getting clearer and clearer, I don’t have one restricted identity. I’m plenty inside, and it’s a blessing. Mark Manson is right:
The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.
Another way to grasp that plenty inside with this interview of the artist Katherine Ball:
On that bio topic, could we all borrow this ultimate blurb from Kafka? I love it; magnificent, yet simple and ordinary:
I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
– Franz Kafka
What I want: making progress
For Rick Rubin “expressing oneself in the world and creativity are the same. It may not be possible to know who you are without somehow expressing it”.
The expression of self on this blog helps me measure progress. I hope I’ll laugh reading it in a few years, as it would mean growth.
I want less ego; less conditioning; and more heart:
Progress is key to defining me. As Benjamin Franklin said: “When you are finished changing, you're finished”. And as usual, I find Epictetus sets the North Star… Life goal:
The signs of one who is making progress are that he criticizes no one, praises no one, blames or accuses no one, and never speaks of himself as being anyone of importance, or as one who has any knowledge. And if he is praised, he laughs within at the person who is praising him, and if anyone finds fault with him, he makes no defence. He goes about like an invalid, taking care not to disturb any part of him that is getting better until he has achieved lasting recovery.
What I accept: it’s getting deeper
I often ask myself: Does this feel peaceful, or hysterical?
The immediate feeling helps my assessment of a person, an activity, a task, a thought… anything. It doesn’t need to be precise, as everything tends to be more on one side than the other. Hysteria is no longer an option.
And to find inner peace, I follow Eckhart Tolle’s advice from A New Earth:
Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think “I Am” and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the I Am. Sense your presence, the naked, unveiled, unclothed beingness.
I also 100% accepted I know absolutely nothing (and that knowledge has no value if it’s not shared anyway). This question from Adyashanti in The End of Your World (on my book recommendations) surely rocked my world, and made me smile – I accepted the answer.
This one question—“What do I know for certain?”—is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it’s meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions—things you believe because you were taught or told that they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.
To be continued!
Thanks for your attention. Take care, and have a great week ☀
Love the authenticity tied to your personal narrative.
Pretty sure it was Jerry Garcia who said: “Don’t be the best in the world at what you do—be the only one in the world who does what you do.”