Identity Crisis
by Laura Interval
I just left my life half way around the world. I have come to a foreign land where no one knows me. I have no past here. I have no determined future. I have only a very magnified view of the now. I woke up this morning in my rented lodge on the west coast of New Zealand. It is a small cottage tucked back into the lush green bush. It sits on the floor of what used to be a volcano that has since shifted and fallen into the ocean. Rising up just outside my front window on either side of me are what is left of the volcanic walls. To my right, is “The Watchman”, a sheer wall of gorgeous rainforest that quickly reaches 200 ft. and just as quickly disappears into the Tasman Sea. The indigenous New Zealand people, the Maori, gave it the name because it resembles the profile of a large man staring to the sea as he watches over the valley. In the middle of these two mountains is the quiet, peaceful flat volcanic floor that leads to the black sand beach and wild silvery winter sea. I look at this scene and I feel small and humbled. I am in awe, I am grateful and I am relieved of my earthbound worries. I am also relieved of any earthbound identity and now realizing that this is exactly why I came here. I am sitting on the floor and utterly alone. The world that I so closely identify with is a hemisphere away and 19 hours behind me. I am surprised by the void I feel without my electronic communication vices. I could have sworn my pocket just vibrated. I do have a little cell phone, but it doesn’t work up here in the bush. I am overwhelmed by the sensation that I, as I know me, exist to no one but myself at this moment. It’s a strange feeling, complete anonymity. Most of us are defined by what we do, where we are and who we are with. Our identities are our jobs, our geography and our friends and family. Like the legs of a chair, take one of those away and you feel off balance, take them all away and you are crashing to the floor amidst an identity crisis. I am realizing that this has been my mistake in the past. Somewhere along the way, a large part of my identity of my self had begun to rely on outside factors. When my relationship exploded, my chair lost a leg. I was seriously out of balance and I began to reach out for anything that felt safe and familiar. I was fearfully grasping at what I knew and hoping it would stabilize me. At any given moment I was teetering between work, family and friends. But, when my contentment with work began to falter, my chair no longer supported me. Two legs are not enough and I was missing the most important support, the fourth leg… me. The one thing we know for sure in this life is that nothing is sure in this life, right? So why then do we tend to rely on everything else but ourselves for our identity? Why do we allow anything outside of ourselves to mess with our balance? I mean, if you’re blessed with beautiful family and friends, then they are a huge part of you and your support system. But you must be the most supportive leg on your chair. You must be your support system when all the other aspects of your identity change or disappear. How much of YOU is in your identity? Take away your job. Take away your family and friends. Take away your familiar surroundings. If you woke up tomorrow in a foreign land with no one telling you what to do, what would you do? Would you write, or paint, or go back to bed? Would you go and explore or would you stay inside? How would you spend this day if left totally up to you? Would you still pray or practice faith? Who would you be? If your answers are drastically different from your everyday life now, I challenge you to make some changes. I challenge you to really look at who you are. It may sound simple, but are you your external influences, or are you YOU? Play the situation game. Make sure that you are making conscious choices for yourself in your everyday life. Remember that you are not defined by your past and you can choose every moment to be who you want to be. Now put those choices, your passions and your beliefs into the legs of your chair. Let who you are without your external influences hold you up. What makes you feel strong? What do you know you are good at? What do you believe about yourself? What do you know to be your identity? Ultimately, you have all the answers, and only you can keep your chair from falling apart. External factors are important and often necessary, but are subject to change. If you make up your identity, you will never have your chair pulled out from under you. Your identity will never be a crisis. It’s no coincidence that “The Watchman” looms over me as I write this, reminding me of the power of now. We must all be watchers of our own thoughts, our own actions and that our own identities become conscious choice.
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