The One for whom we search.

artwork created by Hsiao-Yen Jones

Identity is something the entire human race seeks for their entire life, only to end disappointed in what they find. Traveling to the ends of time and space we hope to find springs of self-knowledge, thinking that by drinking the elixir that bubbles forth, a dawning of unique personhood will quench our thirsty souls and change us into someone of unique self-worth. 

We are, in large part, shaped mostly by matters in childhood that send us on journeys trying to understand or validate those early messages in ways that resemble the game of pick-up sticks; the art of arranging pieces of wood into complete constructions without removing the very stick that brings the construction crashing down into a pile of ash. So we begin once more only to be forced to discard the initial elements and start with nothing but the ever-flowing river of life: fluid and morphing moment by moment into shadows and phantoms.

In our quest, we often allow ourselves to reduce the work by depending on others whom we assume must have done the heavy lifting. So we form shared identities that belong to those who radiate semblances of authenticity and seem to have earned what we long for. Yet after a time, we fall short of our desires, for senses of peace, tranquility, and fulfillment. But finding instead a belt too tight that squeezes out what constitutes our hidden internal truth. Thus we become as birds sitting side by side on telephone wires sharing common habits and shallow skins, never feeling real or satisfied.

Time after time we try and fail to discover the one we are truly so we can claim self-assurance as solid and immovable as the granite shaping the mountains that grow mere inches over the span of eternities. But instead, we often resign and become as dictated by initial configurations that belong to someone but not us. And there we remain precarious and fearful of what we imagine lurks in the depths of unknowing.

The fortunate, only after failures too vast to recount, realize that at the core is a nothingness around which is shaped, without any effort or attempt, the true person we are. There is no true identity that defines with limitations; only one that unites. For to be a fabricated somebody, simply results in isolation from others not like us, and means we will live forever in bondage as fabricated beings we invent to feel at home with others who likewise invent themselves as other beings, just as artificial and hollow as we ourselves have become.