A few days ago, I came across a faded black-and-white photo taken two weeks after I was born. In the photo, my aunt and uncle were sitting together on their living room sofa. My aunt was holding me close, nestled in her lap.
Standing there, staring at this 3 x 5- inch picture in my hands, two questions suddenly popped into my mind: What am I? And another: Who am I?
These questions emerged because I was pondering the fact that I had no recollection of that photo being taken, and at that time, I was nearly totally dependent on others for my survival. I was looking at a self I had no memory of being.
I could see an infant boy weighing eight pounds and measuring twelve inches long.
I came into this world with a body equipped with organs, connective tissues, bones, and biological systems necessary for life. But is that what I am, fundamentally? The body in that photo, in a physical sense, is the same body writing this now, but I have no memory of being it.
So if biology can't explain why that infant feels like a stranger, maybe there's something about what I am that biology alone can't reach.
And then the question of who I am. Is that any easier to answer?
Is who I was when that picture was taken decades ago the same as who I am today?
Perhaps take a moment to reflect on your answers to these two questions, then reconsider whether what you see in any photos of yourself is all you get.
And who was I ten or twenty years ago? Strange to think that every decade or so we outgrow ourselves in a sense. Certainly, we outgrow friendships. While family relationships aren't necessarily outgrown they do shift a bit. And if you were lucky enough to live in one location all of your life, that place, undoubtedly has changed and maybe even become almost unrecognizable to you. Our identity also changes from roles we occupied (parent, teacher, etc.) to the uncertainty in those gray spaces called transitions. Can I bank on this for my identity--I'm a daughter of God? Is that eternal and unchanging? Well, maybe, but I still have to sort out all of the rest.