Who are you really?

I was walking my mother's dog (an animal I'm not particularly fond of with the personality of a fearful cardboard box) and I started to slip into that icky 'what if' thought pattern where I comb through recent events that didn't go how I wanted them to and wonder about minutiae. It was getting to the point of utter ridiculousness (what if I had decided to wear my black high-heeled boots instead of my slouchy leather ones, would we have had sex?) when I just -- stopped. I thought, wow, this doesn't matter at all. If I met me at a party and had this conversation I would be bored out of my mind. Honestly, who is that vapid? Of course, I am, and I really believe that most of us, on some level or at some moments annoy the shit out of ourselves. So I started thinking about things I like about myself, things that are awesome, things I appreciate. You know, stuff like: I'm a really loyal friend, I trust easily, I ask for what I want, people seem to think I'm cool. And as I was thinking this stuff I realized how much of it was based on other people and circumstances I have no control over. I started to think about what's left when everything else is gone. Because, really, that's the only thing that you get to keep no matter what. So I asked myself: who are you, really?

It was a very fruitful question. I challenge you to ask it of yourself.

In a way, you have to fight to experience life. It is easy to sit back and sleep through it. In order to really live, to grasp the nature of being a living entity that is connected to all other living beings, you have to dig into the soil of the earth, you have to sweat and labor out of love, you have to plant seeds of love inside yourself and you have to tend them. Happiness is growth. This is what it means to be passionate. You are a connected, interdependent being outside of societal structures and within them. You are more than any one part of your life, and you are more than the sum of all the parts of your life. Feeling lost is about forgetting you are connected to things. So, who are you, really?