I’m back, just like winter. Coming down today in brief torrents of misplaced hail; winter was never shy announcing its reentrance on window panes, bursting new buds, driving the aspirational walker back indoors. In my developmental psychology class we are looking at the lifespan, examining how biological and social pressures can generalize our lives into distinct stages…I know that meaningful search for identity I’m currently going through, it’s no original occurrence, I’m no original idea. It’s simply a stage; middle age is statistically speaking supposed to be the best time of your life, pressures off! But still currently (not all the time, usually I’ve noticed when dealing with some type of disturbance or conflict) I find myself in the middle of an internal struggle, trying to define myself to myself, so if needed I could partake in some pretty good convincing that my life does have meaning. Yet as I keep searching for this sturdy foundation to build my identity (yes my ego) off of I’ve considered perhaps another solution.

Although I may see myself roughly embodying a few unique qualities, who I ultimately want to end up as still remains changing and undetermined. Then nights like last night happen, friends and circumstances fall into place, time easily passes, worry dissipates. The moment takes care of itself; without the presence of identity without the presence of stability. Although I aspire to be grounded on my own mountain of solidarity where the boundaries are defined, where the definitions are set clear; perhaps I should take a different approach. If moments are fluid, why am I achieving to be stable? If I am striving to be solid and if time by nature is fluid, why am I inherently creating resistance? Let me be water, let me be water, let my identity be water, fluid and bending, consistent in all its inconsistency.     

“The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you….perhaps you find it yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ —— and find that there is no death”

                                         -Eckhart Tolle

Lets be honest; I love the semi colon