On Identity

Thursday, September 11, 2008

11:30pm
My mind has been preoccupied with “identity.” The concept intrigues me. What if the “identity” we have spent lifetimes crafting, at its core, was just a mirage? What if we discovered that who we thought we were was merely an insufficient, phenotypic, optical illusion; and that the catalog of groupings & causes, proficiencies & defects….even the very substance of our gene pool, though intricately designed and extensively studied, were simply pathways of expression for our most true Self? What if, in our quest for uniqueness & distinction….our insatiable need to be different, we have mistaken indicators and descriptors for the infinite substance of who we really are?

Often I feel we are all participating in one splendid masquerade. The scene reads like the opening stanza of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetic lament, “We Wear the Mask”:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes –
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Adorned in the most elaborate ideas of individuality, we are mesmerized by our own story. We mingle. We schmooze. We ignore the inclination that behind this story we represent is an awareness that there’s something more to tell, but we haven’t allowed ourselves to discover what. You see this discovery requires time we don’t have; discipline we can’t attain; attention that is disordered and deficient; and a willingness to bring all you believe to be true under scrutiny, at the risk of being left overexposed and unrecognizable to yourself. It’s far more easy to disappear into the clamor of religion and sect and family and gang and set and politics and nationality and ethnicity and tribe and creed and race and skin color and body type and gender and sexuality and age and status and pedigree and station and alma mater and degree and profession and privilege and access and limitation and lack and personality trait and diagnosis and handicap and ability and success and failure and right and wrong and familiar and other….. and…. this dance is exhausting!

.....who turned out the light?....