I am nothing

This beautiful, short, 3-worded, all-encompassing sentence, seemed like the perfect foundational spot to start sharing my latest learnings from.

I first remember reading such a sentence on some blogs relating to Buddhism and the Zen practices. I was much younger then, think early twenties and just raring to go. The world was my oyster and I self identified as extremely ambitious (unfortunately with perhaps a clear, visible disdain for anyone who wasn’t). I was also in the habit of collecting achievements as proofs and additional armour which helped ascertain and label and verify who I was to myself and others. My real world journey had really just begun, and I was something, and aspired to figure out how to put in the inputs to continuously become something much more.

And in the middle of that, reading “I am nothing”, made me feel that the lesson was to try to learn to be ok with being invisible and to a person whose entire sense of self-worth and external validation was coming from being something, this seemed like a lesson I simply did not see any value in learning.

Last year, during my self-imposed sabbatical, as I got back into trying to figure out what makes for a more solid foundation for happiness, inner peace and definition of success, one particular weekend gifted me a different perspective of this same, seemingly simple and yet complex, 3-worded sentence.

I was explained how to interpret it. It was to mean, “I am not the labels imposed on me by myself, or others, or my past, or my meaning-making mind, or anything. I am I. I am worth. I am outside of any identifications.”

This opened up my world to a degree this small piece cannot do justice. This reminder served to quieten my constant internal search for defining and refining who I am. The quiet doesn’t last very long without continuous practice. But now I have a tool which allows me to make myself present to any definitions of I being the work of ego and it’s strong hold on my beliefs and my choices and my actions.

And this is important for adults, as the difference between children and adults is precisely one of baggage and burden and limiting beliefs through past evidences. We repeat our past as we bring it into our future willingly, because we’ve limited our context of actions and possibilities within the beliefs and evidences of our past. Children are curious and open and do not know. Adults take pride in knowing and showing what they know, and start seeing the world from the lens of what they know and what they think will happen. More dangerous perhaps, is they start seeing themselves from the lens of what they know they are and what they know they can do, and what they know they aren’t and what they know they cannot do.

When I was at Facebook, Mark always said, “we’re never as good as they say we are, and never as bad as they say we are”. Today I can see that sentence from these new lens too. Our minds engage in defining and labelling to be able to predict and anticipate and function more efficiently. And those analytical skills come handy in analytical fields of work. Defining and labelling oneself though restricts our ability to act because it takes the focus away from our actions and towards whether or not we can perform those actions well or whether those actions produce the intended or desired results as expected.

Interestingly, in this new world, “I am nothing”, and “I am worth” are not mutually exclusive at all, and happily coexist because of the way they have been defined.

Not all readers will be at the juncture in their life where they can relate, but for those with whom this resonated, consider embracing a reminder of “I am nothing” when you feel self-imposed or other-imposed or perceived-other-imposed labels limiting you. In one sentence, you can remove the baggage of your past and begin anew just like a child who is told, “you can be anything you want”. :)

One Last Thing

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