It’s a question that I ask myself over and over again every single day. It’s at the very core of what I am, and what I want to become. The difficult part, is finding out what that is.
If someone asks you who you are, what do you say? We assume they literally mean what is your name? Which in reality is exactly what they mean.
But when we ask ourselves Who am I? We don’t respond with I’m Fiona Price. We respond with depth and insight. It might be that we include our job title, or our relationship status and child count. But is that enough to really define who we are? Is three or four small pieces of information really enough to make us feel we actually know who we are deep down inside? Of course its not. It’s just we often don’t feel we need to think any further than that, either because we are happy with who we think we are, or because it is just too painful to think about.
Here is a little fact for you. There are over 7 billion people on this earth. How many of them, do you think can honestly say they know who they are, that they are happy with their lives and they planned to be who they are? Realistically we will never know, but reason tells us that is likely to be very few in proportion to the overall population. Some for example are living in such poverty, that thinking about who they are may not even cross their minds, as their only thought is where the next meal might come from. Some do not have the mental capacity to question who they are. So the fact that we have the opportunity, the function and the ability to not only question, but change who we are, is a privilege not everyone will get that chance to have. Yet so few of us ever give it a second thought. Because for the most part we think we know who we are already.
Finding out who you are can be one of the hardest journeys you will ever be on. Often it will mean you find aspects of yourself you really don’t like, which can be painful and brutally honest, but that’s the whole point. If we are not able to look at ourselves in an honest way, how can we ever expect to become the people we want to be.
For most of our lifes, many of us are on a constant search or mission to be perfect. Now be real, how are we ever going to be perfect. In the past 200,000 years we have not been perfect, hence why we evolve, so if nature doesn’t want us to be perfect why do we try to hard to be? Who decides what perfect is anyway? If it’s our peers then I would suggest we take a long hard look at how they really live and see if they are really truly happy. Society puts pressure on us to look perfect, to never act out and to be nice to everyone all of the time. Which just isn’t going to happen, sometimes I just need to go out without my makeup on, sometimes I just need to be sad and sometimes just sometimes, I need to have a good old rant about something.
If you are here to find perfection, I would warn you to give up now, we will never be perfect, we are not meant to be perfect. We can only be the version of perfection we choose to be, because we are the only ones who can decide what perfection means to us. Similarly if you are here to make yourself be like that woman you saw in the shop yesterday, who always seems to upbeat, happy and amazing, don’t even try. Outwardly she might be that person, hell she might even be that person inside for real. But everyone is different, everyone has a secret, and everyone can be better than they were yesterday.
What we need to decide is at what point will we be happy with who we are, is it when we have reached a milestone (shifting a few pounds), or when we have felt something (happy and not low for a period of time), or is it just when we feel comfortable with who we are, when we don’t feel that we need to change anything immediate, sure we will always have something, but it doesn’t affect us every day. We can just be who we are and be happy with that being the extent of it.
So every day, ask yourself, just once. Who am I? and see what you think of the answer.
Author: Fiona Price
Author Bio: An english girl, overcoming life’s harsh reality with honesty, happiness and passion.
Link to social media or website: https://www.instagram.com/fj_price/
