In just over two months, I’ll be 50 years old, and I’ve been struggling a lot with that fact. Because honestly, as I hit that mid-life stride, I’ve really been struggling identifying who I am.
There is one school of thought that says who we are is defined by what we go out there and make happen with our own actions. There’s another school of thought that says who we are is based upon waiting upon God for guidance and direction to know precisely what that is to go do. And there’s yet another school of thought that says the answer lies somewhere between those two. So, in the process of trying to define who we are, many of us choose to base it upon what we do for a living. Others of us base it upon the status we hold in society. Some of us base it upon the titles we hold in the world around us. There are even those of us who base it upon all the awards we garner in life. And in the past decade or so, many of us are basing who we are upon how many followers we have gained on our social media. Honestly, I don’t want my life to be based upon any of these things. I want who I am to be defined by something else, something far deeper.
I guess you would say this is the very reason why I’m in the middle of having somewhat of a mid-life crisis over this. Unfortunately, most of my life I have based who I am on each of those things and more and all of it feels so very superficial. Who I am shouldn’t be based upon what I’ve seen and done, or the jobs I’ve held, or the titles I’ve gained, or the money I’ve had, or all the partners I’ve dated, or the friends I’ve friended, or any popularity I’ve ever come into, or on anything externally whatsoever, as none of that is going to matter when I die.
I realize now that I’ve consistently been basing who I am by the world’s standards all because I got so overlooked so often in my life starting back when I was a young kid. Being ignored more than not by own family and peers throughout my childhood, I eventually turned to drugs and alcohol and many other addictions to numb myself from it all. Soon I forgot about who I was entirely and began basing who I was on those around me and what they thought of me, making me completely miserable in the process. But here I am about to turn 50 in a few months, and I can at least say there is one thing I’ve come to see is necessary to defining who I am and that’s having a relationship with my inner child, something I ignored for most of my life. I nurture my inner child now and do my best every, single, day to listen to what is important to him. And if there is one genuine thing that comes from doing so, it’s deciding who I am from a much deeper perspective than what much of the world uses as a defining perspective of themselves.
At my core, who I am, is just a kid with a big open heart, who truly loves people on a very deep level, who has a great imagination, who is extremely sensitive to others, who believes in the best in everyone regardless of their past or present, and who cares about even the slightest of pain in another when he sees it. That is who I am today and while on the grand scheme of things that won’t make me very memorable on this planet when it’s my time to pass from this plane of existence, I at least feel I’m being authentic now to the real me, the me that I abandoned as a kid because the world told me I needed to be something otherwise to matter.
I matter because I exist. And who I am in existing is a really great kid who’s grown up to see the world with an unconditionally loving heart. In the world’s standards, that may not matter, but in God’s standards, maybe that’s all that matters…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew
