"If
God
had meant man to
fly,
he would have given him wings."
...
In preparing for this conversation ie in looking at what there is to
share
about my own evolution of who I experience myself to be as a
human being,
I knew that if I did it well, it would also say something about who we,
each and all of us, really are. I considered starting this conversation
with the opener "On this journey I've been on, there's
been an evolution ..." which I then rejected for being too grandiose,
too pretentious, not down to
Earth
enough. Look: if who we really are, were assigned just one descriptor,
it could be "down to
Earth".
Really. No, what fits better as an opening statement for this
conversation, is "In
my life,
there's been an evolution ...".
In the
beginning
(that is to say, well before I started inquiring into things of this
nature myself), if you'd asked me the question "Who are you?", I
would've responded with "I'm
Laurence"
- in other
words,
who I held myself to be for myself and for others, was my name. And if
you'd shown me
a group photograph
and asked "Which one are you?", I would've pointed at it and said "I'm
that one" or "That's me" - in other
words,
who I also held myself to be, was my body ie I was my name / body.
And the big thing about the latter phase, was that in it I'd learned to
make a certain distinction which brought who I am to the
foreground. This represented some progress over my admittedly
naïve "Who I am is my name / body", yet still left the question of
who I really am, open to debate, conjecture, discussion, and even to
argument. But my answers to the question "Who are you?" were covertly
clever: they all served to mask the fact that I didn't have one
single answer that was true.
Once I got clear about being
the context
in which
my entire life
and my life experience (and all its components) occur, I began to
experiment with expressing who I really am authentically ie while
coming from that
context.
When I did that, what slowly came into focus was a
new
answer to the question "Who are you?". So now, as a
human being
coming from my own
contextual
experience in conversation ie coming from who I know mySelf to be, yes
I am
the context
in which
my life
and my life experience (and all its components) occur. Then, looking at
your experience of who I am (in other
words,
looking at who you know me to be), I assert that who I am is
my speaking.
I am my conversation. I am
my word
... and that's who you know me to be. Moreover, when you know me to be
my speaking
(that is to say when you and I engage in conversation) and you
speak,
then who I am for you is my
listening
- in other
words,
who I am for both you and I, is
my speaking
/
listening.
And that, in the
terseness
this conversation affords, is the evolution of who I am / who we are:
from name / body, to who I am / who we are, as
speaking
/
listening.
