I am _________.

There are so many words I could end the title with - all of them true, yet all of them completely incorrect. In fact, the title as it stands is probably the most correct it ever could be. I am ________. End of story. I am nothing. I am everything. I am indefinable.

This post has been in the making for a couple of months, but I didn't quite realize it until I woke up this morning. My views have undergone a massive paradigm shift of late, which leaves me breathless at times. At this very moment I am bursting with thoughts and things I want to say, but I am holding onto them for a bit because they aren't quite ready. To say some of my thoughts now would be no different than frosting a still-hot cupcake and watching as it all melts off.

While those particular thoughts cool on a wire rack for a bit, I do have another batch of thoughts, completely cooled and ready to go.

You may have gathered from my intro that I want to talk about labels. For so long, I've been looking for my label - the word or phrase that I could neatly and quickly insert into a sentence that somehow conveys the entirety of who I am. How silly I was to think there was a word that all-encompassing.

Before I continue, I want to side-step to a different topic, but will make sense in a moment: Buddhism. While it has only been in the last few months that I have decided to study to become a Buddhist, I have realized my brain has always wanted to follow this path. It's beliefs and principles have always spoken to me, even when I didn't realize it. Sure, most of my life, my actions have been very much NOT Buddhist and I course have a lot of learning to do.... but it feels right.

But what does Buddhism have to do with me labeling myself? Everything! It is human nature to label. We label everything and sometimes even label the label. We label our gender, our race, our sexuality. We label our political preferences, our religions, our social standing. Buddhism does not advocate labels, stating that labels only limit us. But Buddhism also teaches the "middle way". The middle path is all about avoiding extremes. If we were to give up labels completely, verbal communication would be all but impossible, after all even the words you are reading are labels designed to give meaning to sounds and letters.

The key here is not to let labels equate limits. Even calling myself Buddhist is a label, one the Buddha would likely not agree with, as he did not refer to himself as being a "Buddhist". So, I can call myself a geek (something I'm finally proud to call myself), but that doesn't mean that I don't possess non-geek qualities or interests. I can call myself lazy, but maybe I just haven't found the the "thing" that inspires me into action. I can call myself ugly, but maybe I'm just too busy focusing on what I don't like. I can call myself whatever I want to, but that doesn't make me that word.

Labels are just words. The color "green" could easily have been called "blue" or "yellow" or even "asdkljfs". Calling it green doesn't change what it is.

So who am I? It's simple. I am ________.

Who am I?

While, no one has actually asked me directly, "Who are you?" (and I hope no one does any time soon), I simply have no idea how to answer a question like that.

It seems to me that there can't be one simple answer, or can there? Is it possible that one word is all some people need to define themselves? For instance, I have heard many mothers talk about their lives and I find one common thing among all of them while everything else about them is different. Working women, stay at home moms, married, single, happy, not so happy... but the one common thread among them is that above all else, they are moms. They view motherhood as the single-most spectacular accomplishment of their lives. But is that who they are? Is it so simple that the one thing a female human being is born to do (procreate), the singular definition of who she is?


If this is indeed the case, what about women who aren't mothers, and also, men who aren't fathers? Do they simply not have an identity?


Think about it. When you ask people about themselves, what is the first thing that comes out of their mouth? That is usually the thing they deem most important to themselves. But is that thing who they are?


I feel like "who" I am, is maybe the collection of everything "me": My thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions. This makes defining your inner "who" harder and easier to do at the same time. Harder in that, how do I know when to stop? Easier in that, I don't have to pick just one word.


Maybe I've talked myself in circles here and that none of this makes any sense. I don't know. But I do know that I'm going to do whatever it takes to find out who the real me is. Because if I don't know who I am, then I can never be confident in myself.