What (or Who) R U?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question was the bane of  the Boomer generation, and I still hear adults ask it today. I can scarcely  imagine a more damaging question! The assumptions it makes,  communicates, and reinforces about life are spirit-robbing at the least.  

Based in part on memes like this, my generation conceived of life as a series  of stages: you grow until you become what you will be; then you are what you  are until you are not. Life, neatly packaged! 

Somehow, at some magic moment tucked in somewhere between your 16th birthday and your 31st, a bell rings, and you declare, “I am Spartacus and I will  be Spartacus until the day I die.” 

You have found yourself! You have an identity! Congratulations! You know who  you are, and you know where you fit into the jigsaw puzzle called ‘society’.  You’ve taken your place on the Great Mandala. How awful for you! You might  say your life ended before it began, except… 

Real Life doesn’t always follow IKEA’s schematics! But when it doesn’t, our  reaction often includes anxiety, depression, even self-loathing. We are  charting our own course, but we feel that we are not living up to someone else’s expectations for us.” 

When an adult asks you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the  expected answer is doctor, firefighter, or astronaut. A somewhat more  thoughtful answer might be kind, creative, or wise. But either way, you are  being asked to place yourself in a straitjacket.  

The pernicious assumption, of course, is (1) that you will someday become  something, possibly just one single thing, and (2) that you will remain that  thing throughout the remainder of your sad life. How far we’ve deviated from  the existentialist ideal: “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whatever I  want to be!” 

Our categories reflect the intuition that there is something about us that is  variable and something that is fixed. According to ‘the standard model’, I am  variable until I become fixed but, once fixed, I remain fixed for the duration.  

I am like molten metal being poured into a mold and left to harden. Molten, I  am uber-plastic; the choice of mold is a variable but from a very limited inventory of options; once poured, however, I am eternally inert.  

Our intuition is correct but our application of that intuition is fatally flawed. In  fact, who you are and what you are completely disconnected. Who you are is  fixed. You are who you are from the moment of your birth (or before) to the  moment of your death (or after).  

Doubt me? Think about an early childhood experience. You were there then,  weren’t you? Just like you are here now. Then is now but you is you! Who you  are does not change because there is nothing to change. “We are the stuff that  dreams are made of.” (Shakespeare) Like Odysseus, you are Nemo, no one; or  in the words of M. Sartre, “You are not what you are, and you are what you are  not.” 

You are the negation of what is in pursuit of what isn’t. You are the third leg of  Bobby Kennedy’s famous triangle: “You see things as they are and you dream  of things that never were.” That’s who you are.  

What you are is an entirely different animal. What you are is ever changing. In  the language of Eastern spirituality, who you are is atman (soul), what you are  is maya (attachment). According to the pre-Socratics, who you are is  permanent, what you are is always in flux. According to the great heavy metal  band known as Thomas (Aquinas) and the Scholastics, who you are is singular and ‘simple’, but what you are is ‘legion’ and complex.  

Across the globe and throughout recorded history, the intuition of  permanence-in-flux is nearly universal. But we know better! The so-called Enlightenment flipped the script. Ground is now figure and figure ground. Who we are has become multifarious but what we are is now fixed. 

Should we be surprised then that identity is now fragile…but destiny  immutable? The same cultural mutation that brought us bipolar disorder and  schizophrenia also brought slavery, the assembly line, and the proverbial gold  watch at retirement. 

We are all Daniel Webster, we are all Faust. We need no devil, no  Mephistopheles; we have parents and teachers, influencers and role models enough for that. We will sell our souls (who we are) for fame and fortune (what  we are): ‘Getting and spending’, we’ll ‘lay waste’ our powers (Wordsworth). And we will pretend to feel good about it, from the first graduation party to the  last retirement send-off.  

We become what others expect us to be; we become what others want us to  be. We live their lives, not ours. In Paul’s Letter to Ephesians (2: 10) we read  that we are created to perform “the good works that God has prepared in  advance that we should live in them.” 

Well and good, but we, our ‘enlightened selves’, have replaced God with  Mammon. We allow others, the secular system, to define who (what) we are.  But who are we really? We are the image and likeness of the ineffable God.  Therefore, we too are ineffable. But we spend nearly every waking moment identifying ourselves with the labels others place on us, describing us as if we  were a what and not a who. “I am…” is an oxymoron. 

Sartre’s existential anthropology (above) recapitulates Parmenides’ pre Socratic cosmology. According to Parmenides, Being consists of Divinity (goddess), Aletheia (truth), and Doxa (appearance).  

Re Aletheia, Parmenides wrote: “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable,  whole…and complete. Nor was it once nor will it be since it is now all together,  one, continuous…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be  heard of. Nor is it divisible since it is all alike.” That’s who you are!

But he characterized Doxa as “to come to be and to perish, to be and not to  be, to change place (motion), and to exchange bright color.” That’s what you  are! 

You can never alter who you are just as you can never preserve what you are.  Instead, you leave behind fossil remnants of what you were…the detritus  known as ‘your works (Ozymandias), your legacy’.  

So celebrate what you are, knowing that it is ever changing, but embrace who you are, knowing that it is immutable.

Image: René Magritte, The Lovers I, Oil on Canvas, 54×73.5cm, 1928