Healing: The Definitions of Who I Am (How Do You Walk in the World)
I think everyone who knows us has a different definition of who we are. To my patients, I am their Doctor; one with a definitely unique bedside manner.
I listen as much as I treat, and they share with me things that they feel safe talking about, hopefully understanding that they will be accepted without judgment, and that I will attempt to answer any questions they bring to me with honesty, respect and kindness.
Yet their definition does not define me.
To my friends, I hope I am someone they think of with fondness. While I am sometimes a difficult friend to have, because I’m not very good at small talk or conversations that have no substance, I hope to them I am someone who is helpful, kind, funny and genuine, and that they know I am here for them in any way I can be.
But again, their definitions do not define me.
To my extended family, I think I am a curiosity, bordering on an enigma. To those who see me closer, I think in some ways I defy definition, especially recently.
Through this process of change, this journey deeper into my soul, I believe they are trying to understand those changes in me so that they might understand the new person within their family.
Yet even their redefinitions do not define me.
And within my immediate family, within the blessing of my wife and my children, I believe I can exist without definition. For the love they extend to me does not require me to act, rather simply to be.
In their love I find the space I need to discover the truths within me, and in their goodness I find the reflections of the person I am becoming.
But even their lack of a definition does not define me.
For that choice, that decision, is ultimately mine alone to make, or to even choose not to make. I find myself accepting an ever increasing desire to exist without a definition of myself, so that I am free to ‘be’ in each experience, without needing a rule to guide me.
Trusting the deeper instincts within the moment, always screening them against the principles that resonate inside of me.
So that I might flow through the world in harmony with that which I believe to be goodness, kindness and sincerity.
For often we cling to a sense of identity, that it might shield us against a supposed onslaught of insult and infamy from the world. Yet it is our attachment to a definition that creates within us turmoil and pain, for only when we believe we are something can we experience a sense of loss when that definition is changed, or taken from us.
If we exist as an awareness in the moment, without definition other than “I am”, we will always be exactly who we need to be in that time and in that place.
So as I work through this change, this movement of my soul, I find myself trying to shed my need to be something, other than an expression of the principles which I feel are important: love, kindness, goodness, benevolence, patience, hope and sincerity.
Although I have roles within the world into which I pour my soul, that of Doctor, of friend, of family, of father and of husband, I hope to carry with me those principles and live according to their precepts.
For in the end, who I am, is really who I chose to be.
And in that, I am trying to chose wisely.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings