Who Are You?

We ask kids what they want to be. And we also teach them what they must answer.

When we ask them what they want to be, we wait to hear what profession they plan to exercise when they grow up. We want to hear that they are longing to be lawyers, doctors, firemen/firewomen, astronauts, nurses.

By doing so, we teach our kids that they are what they do. They are the career, the degrees, the titles and the medals.

But we are not any of that. We might have some of that, but we are not that. Somewhere along the way we have confused what we have with what we are, and so we make sure that our kids become as confused as we are. So they can be normal, like everybody else.

And a proof of how confused we have become is that we, full grown up adults, have no idea who we are as individuals.

When somebody asks us who we are, we give a generic automatic response, not because we don’t want to give an honest response, but because we don’t know who we are neither. And we don’t know it because we have never made the question seriously, nor have made the attempt to answer it.

Test this by staring in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and ask: “Who are you?”. Ask it again, and again and again. The more uncomfortable you feel, the better.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to answer, most people don’t answer this question in their lifetime. The point at the moment is not answering, but getting used to make the question. The answers will come once you make the question.

So, who are you?