“Who are you?” It’s probably one of the most confronting questions we can be asked.
The obvious answer – “I’m Paul, I’m married, live in Coffs Harbour, publish books, used to be in tourism, marketing, sports promotion and advertising etc” is also not the right answer. I’ve just trotted out my personal CV, which covers what I’ve done and what my experiences are. However that’s quite different to answering the question “Who am I?”
Mark Twain had a famous quote that’s relevant to this question. “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”
Throughout our lives we’ve been conditioned to think of our external appearance as a major component of who we are. “I’m overweight”, ”My bum’s too big for these jeans”, “I look really cool in this outfit”. While the glossy magazines promote our physical appearance as all important, it’s a big mistake to believe that it defines who we are.
To answer the question “Who am I?” we have to really look inside ourselves. We need to consider issues like – our values, our attitude, our passions, our compassion, our purpose in life, our spiritual beliefs, our motivations and whatever else drives us.
Many of these topics involve questions we have never asked ourselves, so it’s no wonder that we have never discussed them with other people. If we don’t know who we are, it can be difficult to form a close relationship with another person. Perhaps these are questions that we should ask ourselves and those people who are important to us. It is possible to change some of our internal settings and it’s quite likely that your partner could point out some aspects of your personality that could be improved. Next time you’re at a dinner party and on the third bottle of wine, this could be a more interesting subject to discuss than current television shows or the latest celebrity gossip.
As we get older, and hopefully wiser, many people start considering issues like “what’s it all about”, “who/ what is God”, “is there life after death”.
If we don’t think about some of these issues, we are in denial and that’s not a great place to be. These are all big issues and whether we like it or not, they impact on our lives. One of the benefits of living for 50 or 60 years is that we have been around long enough to realise that there are more important questions than how much money we have, the value of our house, the brand of car we drive and the title on our business card.