Recently someone asked me a question that I somehow didn’t have the answer to. This was strange because usually I am never at a loss for words, but in this moment I was.
Who am I?
A question like this usually seems to pop up on college essays or high school writing assignments for reasons that I can’t fathom nor explain. When we're young, questions like this seem to stump most of us and cause us to think more in depth about our own lives. This question seems like it should have a simple response but I had nothing.
First and foremost, I am categorically a name. Quantitatively, I am an age, I am a height and a weight (sometimes one that I am not all that happy with, but I love ice cream.) I am a women, because of this I could then be generalized into a number of different categories, like the fact that I am loving, nurturing, and kind. Sometimes on government forms, I am classified as a social security number, therefore just a jumble of words and numbers intertwined. To Michigan State University, I am an ID number as well as a student working towards a degree. I am a fish in a very big pond. To most people’s eyes I am a generally happy person, I enjoy smiling. I am one of God’s creations, hopefully, put on this earth for some kind of purpose. I am a human being, therefore composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. I am my parent’s daughter, therefore a family member, therefore someone’s baby girl who is growing up. I am a sister, someone that is a shoulder to cry on or a laugh to share with.
One is not just composed of their titles and interests, but rather how these different aspects of our lives affect us and create who we are. We are built by our hearts, we are explained by our brains, we are moved by our actions. Who we are goes much deeper than just what we enjoy. For some of us we are still trying to figure out who we are, it is a scary situation not knowing. There is always this lingering possibility that we may never know, because who we are cannot just be simply defined in words or in the manner of a few sentences. To know who I am, you would have to understand the deepest parts of me that i show to no one because sometimes being vulnerable is not easy.
The future holds the possibility of who I will become. Hopefully one day I will be someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's grandmother. Hopefully one day I will be someone's boss, many people's friend, and maybe even someone's inspiration.
But for right now, who I am is unknown and non-categorical. Who I am is not something that I have to be able to answer. If you wanted to know who I was, I would tell you to look at my pictures on Facebook or to read something that I’ve wrote or to listen to a song that I like. I am the kind of person who is better at letting my devices speak for me, ironic right, since I enjoy writing?
So next time someone asks you who you are and you choose to stay silent or leave the word document blank, I applaud you.
