The Definition of YOU

I have one sister. Her name is Leslye. She is 5 years younger than I am, but she's 6 inches taller.  If you don't think that caused problems when we were younger, you're insane.

Anyway... she and I were having a somewhat philosophical discussion and she blindsided me with the following statement:

It's pointless to find out who you are, because who you are is always changing.

I thought about that for a minute. Reluctantly, I had to agree.  Technically, literally and figuratively, people are always changing - even on a cellular level. However, aren't there some "facts" about who we are that stay the same no matter what? Is there no point in finding out what those facts are? 

I have always thought it was important to be on an active journey to find out who "you" is.  Honestly, I look forward to getting older because I have been assured by the mature women I know and Oprah (!) that the older you get, the more self-assured you become.  The specific age mentioned by these women is 40.  

According to legend, there's supposed to be some magical transformation:

1. You get really clear about who you are. I'm eagerly anticipating my fortieth birthday (I have 5 1/2 more years to go!!!) and I have been since I was about 17.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being young - the energy, the working body parts...I still have all my teeth...but in my late teens and early 20's, for me, "magic 40" was something to look forward to - where I would hopefully be less confused about life - what I wanted from one day to the next seemed to always change, and it was nice to believe that there would be a time in my life where I would know who I was and what I wanted - without the inevitable angst.
2. You will be very comfortable with your body. I had always taken this to mean sex. Doesn't this awakening seem to happen around a women's sexual peak? Being comfortable with yourself as a sexual being seems like a win-win situation for everyone involved, right?  I also like to think this means coming to terms with what our body currently looks like, what it does and doesn't do - and being at peace with it. We've all grimaced at the train wreck that is the mature woman that hasn't come to grips with the fact that she never had the body of the 20 year old she stole that outfit from!
3. You are fine if people don't agree with or like who you are. In my book, this one seems to be the best! You can say with complete surety, "This is me, take it or leave it."  I think you realize that whomever loves you, well, they love you and the rest can go to hell. Another side effect of this particular transformation is that you have no problem saying "no" to people. You're not worried about pleasing them...only with pleasing yourself.

A great example of this last point is my mother. There was a point in her life where she declared each Friday, starting at 5 p.m. her "Twitchin' Night". I know you want to ask me why in the world she would call it that. From what I can remember, she said she was tired of being pulled in 20 different directions. She went on to explain that on that night, if all she felt like doing was "twitching" - figuratively speaking - well, that was all she was going to do! That time was off limits to everyone - she was spending time with herself, doing WHATEVER she wanted. Babysit? No. Party? No. Can I come over? No. Can I call you? No. Word got around our family and her friends about "Twitchin' Night" and people respected the boundary. If people wanted to speak to my mother they called Thursday night or waited until Saturday. It was absolutely amazing.

Knowing yourself it great, but I also think that there is also a flip side.

We say that we know ourselves so well that we continually create self-imposed limitations by using who we are as the reason we can't try new things.  Sometimes we even use factors completely out of our control, like our race, gender or where we come from to seal ourselves even more firmly in the box.

Do you put limits on yourself? I have.  I have offhandedly  and immediately dismissed suggestions to branch off into more creative ventures.  I consider myself an analytical person - good with numbers, with right or wrong answers - no gray areas. Not creative at all. Nossir, that's not me...but here I am, writing a blog.  I have written over one hundred pages of a book - a work of fiction - with still many more pages to go.  My story plays like a movie in my head and I'm just trying to get the words down fast enough.  These are things that 10 years ago, I could not have imagined doing in my wildest dreams. But within the last decade I met and married a man who draws comics for a living. His life's work is being creative and he's very good at it, but more than that, being close to him provided a different perspective of "creativity" and what it meant to me. I opened myself to his world and after a while, realized that I too, have stories to tell. That the written word has always been an outlet for me...a fact which seems pretty obvious now. I have been keeping a journal since I was in the fourth grade.  It's second nature for me to express myself this way, but I never allowed myself to make the connection because I had already decided who I was and who I wasn't.

Some things should go without saying, but I will say them anyway. Don't you do anything that is against your moral compass or religious beliefs. Don't be suddenly open to doing crystal meth or wake up tomorrow and decide to plan and execute a bank heist for excitement in your otherwise boring life - that's just crazy. I'm talking about the potentially fulfilling (albeit sometimes scary) experiences we cut ourselves off from because we are afraid of what it means to do them in the context of who we insist that we are.

Some things don't change...but thank goodness some things do.