Become Who You Really Are
“Life is a journey” is one of the great truths. This is known. Given this, it does not make sense to say that I am starting on a new journey. I am not. It is the same journey. But I am making a commitment in this moment to myself, to make it different. And that makes all the difference.
“Become who you were born to be” is what I’ve been told by the greatest idols and characters of high fantasy. But these are precisely that – characters of fantasy. The much more pragmatic version of this statement is – “become who you really are”.
Going back to the commitment I just mentioned, if I think about it, it matters not what any “objective” description of the word “commitment” might mean. This commitment is an idea. It is a feeling that I feel in the marrow of my bones. It is holding still in the face of excruciating vulnerability in encountering the most core parts of my imperfect identity. And it is being at peace with them.
Over the past few days, perhaps coincidentally, twice I’ve had the chance to remark to different people, and I paraphrase here – a human individual’s identity could be modeled by sticking our hand into a bag of completely random marbles; and grabbing any of them. The combinations and differences in every human’s identity are so vast, so amusing, so beautiful; I cannot describe them in words. But the important point is – every human is a unique individual. This is axiom one.
Now I will draw the reader’s attention to a different axiom – life, inherently, has no meaning. I am not the first person to posit this, nor will I be the last. In fact, I feel I will be joined by a vast group of you, my readers who were born at the turn of the 21st century, and many of the absolutely amazing individuals I have had the honor of associating with. This idea of life not having meaning is often encountered under a different name – nihilism.
For those of you who know me, you will know that I am, in fact, not a nihilistic individual. Why, then, do I put forward such a bleak argument? It is because to destroy once and for all the doom of nihilism, as to defeat the dark lord Sauron, I must strongman. I must put forward the strongest version of the nihilism viewpoint possible; I must risk all to get the One Ring to Mt. Doom. If I can defeat this strongest version, surely my words whole merit. And this is what I am now going to do.
Life inherently has no meaning. However, we look around us, and we see civilization as it is today. I think about the fact that I am transcribing these thoughts by hitting clickity-clack pieces of plastic into another large piece of plastic. My keyboard. And my words materialize, almost magically, on a panel of glass in front of me. Or the fact that you, the reader, likely are reading these words by navigating to the equivalent of a virtual postbox, on a different piece of glass. And you hear and feel me communicating with you.
Our civilization is founded on the bedrock of individual meaning. If Newton hadn’t found meaning in understanding the world, if Beethoven had not found meaning in transcribing the some of the most beautiful pieces of music known, if our ancestors hadn’t tried to prise open the orange fruit that was an alphonso mango.
If you, my reader, had not been born to the exact set of parents, at the exact time, in the exact surroundings you were, your life would be completely different, and so would your meaning.
And so I come to the crux of “becoming who we really are” – there is no inherent meaning in life. Every individual is unique. In this individuality, however, every individual human finds their own meaning. This ability to find our own meaning is what differentiates our species from every other species of animal that has lived on this planet before. It is the pride in our identity (otherwise known as the ego). And it is the trust each other. It is the knowledge that back in the hunter-gatherer days, when food was low and we were afraid of being eaten by predators at night, I could rest easy knowing that a person I trusted would stay awake and watch my back. It was knowing that someone would bring food.
I digress. I can’t claim to have answered one of the greatest questions of life faced by any human, this would be too grandiose a task for my humble self. However, I do believe from the deepest parts of my heart, that I have been able to find my own meaning. It manifests in every tiny thing that I do, every aspect of my life, every decision I make. I am making a commitment and starting on the journey in this moment to become who I really am. Time will tell what it means for me. But here is what I hope for every human on this planet – I hope you are able to find your own meaning.