Identity

We all start out as females in the womb, at least that's what they say.  I don't know how a clump of cells can be deemed to be female.  I know it's about chromosomes but still, can you be a female before you even have a body?  Gender is a simple and specific thing, it's about genitals.  Genitals are either female or male. They determine reproductive function.   The rest of the body parts are not particularly female or male although hormones do make females more female and males more male; but you don't have female cells and male cells.  They're just cells.

A developing fetus isn't anything but cells for a while, and then it begins to grow.  Within a few weeks a body begins to take shape and then it develops its gender.  It's a bit of a stretch as I see it, pragmatist that I am, to say we all start out as females.  It sounds like dumbed down pop science that misses the point and sensationalizes it. I think we all start out as humans.  We all start out with everything in common, our humanity.

It takes us a long time to get here from the womb.  Nine months of gestation.  In 266 days our bones and organs have to develop, and our skin and eyes and fingers and toes and brains.  After we've got all of our parts we're still not even close to being fully developed but we have to leave the womb because we're just too big to stay there any longer.  Unlike other mammals, on the day we are born we're still not all the way here yet.  We'll have a long way to go before we can even stand on our own two feet. 

I don't think it's untrue to say that for a lot of people, even after we can stand on our own two feet and long after we've reached puberty, some people never really grow up.  From my own observations it seems that some people never get here at all.  They're here but they're not here.  They exist but they're not conscious of that fact beyond the most rudimentary sense of it.  Their basic personality developed along with their physical body and about the time the body got done growing up, so did the mind.  Anything that gets in after that will likely be the result of a life changing experience because from their perspective, they're all grown up.  They're done.  They know all they need to know and they go off and do life and never look back.    Their identities were constructed from external bits and pieces like a birds nest, from stuff that is easily picked up from their immediate environment.  A few strands of floss, a few sticks of straw,  a nice bit of fluff or two, tamped down at the bottom, build up the walls, and plaster it with a collection of labels.  This is who we are. We all do this.

But it's not who we are, it's just who we think we are.  In my way of looking at it, we're not really here until we realize that our constructed identities are just that, constructed.  I think once we blow off the resistance we get upon realizing that, and if we are willing to go against the grain and trust ourselves instead of submitting to the overwhelming pressure to conform, and we choose to take our walk on an uncharted path, a place where nobody's gone before, when we set aside the birds nest and choose to discover who we really are, that's when we get here.  That's what I mean when I say that a lot of people don't seem to ever get here.   Wherever "here" is.

Of course the truth is that we are all here whether we realize it or not.  You don't have to know that gravity exists to be living in it.  You don't need to know what's happening on those billions and billions of stars out there or the billions of worlds around them to find yourself in the universe, or find the universe in yourself.  The workings of the totality of all that is will go on whether they are comprehended or not and let's face it, we cannot comprehend the totality of all that is.  There will always be infinitely more that we don't know than we do know.  So who we really are is more a measurement of awareness. We are  each a unique, singular combination of everything we know plus everything we don't know.  What we don't know shapes us as much as what we do know.  In that sense, the totality of all that is, must already be a part of us. 

What is our identity but a stage of knowing?  Identity can be finite and static if we think it is or want it to be, but it doesn't have to be.  I can't accept that I am finished with mine.  I don't want to be the same person tomorrow that I am today, and I already know I won't be.  Who I really am, I finally understand, is someone who will never be done with this process.  I love that. 

I still have a bird's nest, as we all do, because it is necessary for us to be able to see each other.   For some the bird's nest is all there is, but for others it is only the beginning.  It is a portal that goes to a much bigger place, a fascinating place, a completely unique place. It is the door to everything.  Have you had the experience of striking up a conversation with someone, birds nest to birds nest, only to find that theirs is a portal too?  And when they open that door just a little bit, they let you get a glimpse of so much more inside them than you'd ever know was there unless and until they felt safe enough to let you come in for a while.  When I can talk with people from my portal to theirs, these are the best conversations in the world.  Communicating at that level is fantastic.  To me, that is what it means to be real.  

There is so much pressure on everyone to build their little bird nest and live their whole life in it and never think beyond it.  To wonder if there's more is not received warmly.  I think most people can hear the messages urging us from within to ask ourselves if what we see makes sense. There will come a moment, whether it is conscious or not, when we will choose to either follow our own heart or to conform.  I think a good many people choose to conform and are aware they are doing it, and they will live out their lives knowing they are not being true to themselves.  It's usually because the money is good or it's easier to not make any waves. It does make waves when we break free and do life our own way, in fact it separates us from everyone else.  That separation is so hard for some that they will abandon themselves for the benefits that conformity brings.

Those who are willing to go it alone are only claiming their rightful place in the universe, taking up their space and time and understanding it is their space and time to take up. For whatever reason, that outer world of trivial pursuits, of appearances and herd think does not like people who won't forfeit what really has meaning in order to get in line, place your nose firmly into the bum of the animal in front of you, and walk wherever they walk for the rest of your life.  Those who refuse to believe that that is all there is and that is all we need will not be understood by those who do believe those things.  In fact those who do believe that's all there is often feel threatened by people who take off their own shackles and walk free.  It scares them.  But I can't think of anything more scary than never really existing in the one time and place that I know for sure I will be here.