Who am I?—taking a dive within the self
[This essay includes and builds upon a series of reflective illustrations shared in an earlier post titled “The Playful Self”]
Busy with the What, Why, and How, I often forget my Who, but if I look closely, it is actually my who (i.e. my definition of my ‘self’) that determines how I see the world and why I do what I do. This ‘Who’ that I live from is a choice that I make. This essay looks critically at this choice, by diving deep into the QUESTion “Who am I?”.
It is organized into three overarching parts (or dives) — Construction of “I”, Deconstruction of “I”, and Reconstruction of “I”. Through each of these, I attempt to take myself (along with the reader) deeper and deeper into the depths of exploring this question of ‘Who am I?’. I hope the ideas, illustrations, activities, and examples I share below can serve as supportive tools for anyone interested to take a dive within their own self.
________PART 1: Construction of “I”________
1.1) I make meaning, therefore I am
Take a minute and see the illustration below. What do you see?
Some might see a young woman with a small nose and others might see an old woman, depending on where they put their attention while looking at the image. If you focused on the bottom part you are more likely to see an old woman. But beyond those two interpretations, you could also say that what you really see are a bunch of black strokes, shapes, and white space, i.e., the raw data of the image.
Optical illusions like these can point to us how we take in threads of perceptions/data through our senses and construct a quilt of meaning out of them, i.e., convert the raw “happening” into “what” is happening. Therefore, one way to think of our ‘self’ or the idea of a ‘person’ can be that as a meaning maker. This continuous process of meaning-making occurs so instantaneously that we are mostly unaware of its existence.
But what if at the very moment a feeling or a thought arises within us, we ask ourselves, “To whom has this thought arisen?”[1]. The response might be, “to me” or “I had this thought or feeling”.
So then the next question is — Who is this ‘me’ or this ‘I’? Well…
Okay, so then we ask, what is my “I” made of? What are its building blocks?
1.2) Building blocks of my “I”
A way to think about one’s self could be as a composition of our various roles and identities.
But where do these roles and identities come from?
I was certainly not born with most of these roles and identities, and even though I might think of myself as being a unique individual, I actually pick most of these identities (their meanings and expectations) through a common process of ‘socialization’ which can be described as — the process of uncritically internalizing and getting identified with the values and expectations of one’s “surround” (family, friends, community, culture).
1.2.1) A ‘copy’ that never had an ‘original’
As I reflect on my identities (or what I have come to identify with), I realize how some of my specific identities were picked up more by a matter of chance. I remember when I was around 8 years old, my brother had casually commented one day, “he’s such a timepass” (implying someone who passes time dilly-dallying). Even though this was a somewhat negative identity, I somehow started acting like a ‘timepass’ more and more, especially when in front of others. Being lazy and a timepass became something that I started identifying with. On the contrary, my eldest brother, through a similar chance, picked up the identity, “I am responsible”. Often the repeating enactment of an identity gives birth to a core identity for oneself. The continuous repetition creates a ‘copy’ that never had an ‘original’ [2], that is, there was no ‘timepass’ or ‘responsible’ self to begin with but the repeated enactment somehow created a groove within and the stream (of self) started flowing that way.
1.2.2) The book of socialization
Growing up, each of us learns (or is socialized into) the various lines of code [4] pertaining to our different roles and identities. It’s as though we are each handed a copy of a book of socialization that lists down the meaning of all these different roles and expected social norms attached to them — what does it mean to be ‘man’, what does it mean to be a ‘good’ woman, what does it mean to be ‘German’, to be ‘successful’, to be ‘lazy’, and so on.
However, it’s not all a lost cause. As we start maturing into adulthood, we can choose to get edit access to this book of socialization. We can develop the capacity to closely examine this book, decide what to add, what to keep, and what to delete from our lines of code around each of our roles and identities. And instead of continuing to be written into by our social surround, we can transform into being the primary author of this book (referred to as ‘self-authoring mind’ by Kegan[3]).
1.3) I am a HOUSE — self as a container
An even richer way to think of our self could be, not as a composition, but instead as a container that holds all our different roles and identities.
I can easily perceive the chair I’m sitting on or this Diwali diya that I made as a physical object that I have constructed using physical materials. But we don’t often look at our own identities as mental objects that we actively construct. Even though we can’t see these objects, they exist nonetheless, as we can easily describe them. For example, I can describe what makes my Indian identity, i.e., what it means to be an Indian to me, or someone else could describe what it means to be a mother for them.
Now, let’s take a pause and engage in a short reflective activity that will help us come up with a rough sketch of how we construct our own self. For this activity, we will think of constructing our self and the identities within it like constructing a house and the objects within it. Just like our home, our sense of self and our identities provide us with a feeling of safety and belongingness and also make us want to naturally protect and safeguard these.
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‘I am a House’ Activity Prompt — Think of your ‘self’ as a house that you have built. You can close your eyes and imagine this house —
See what all is in there, in its various dimensions. Take your attention to all parts of this house.
It might currently be in the living room (i.e., what is salient right now in your life), but travel around and see what all have you constructed over all these years.
Look at all the different rooms you have constructed, including the ones that you no longer visit and also those that you have started constructing for the future, the ones from childhood all the way to now.
What did it look like when you were a child, when you were a teen, and now as an adult?
Are there any objects that have stayed in the house through all these years?
You are the only one who knows your house intimately.
Now open your eyes slowly, take any expressive medium of your choice (like a paper) and start putting down what you saw in any of the hundred languages you express yourself in — either describing it through words or through a doodle or a combination of both, or something else.
Then spend some time thinking about —
What makes this house a home?
Who are you and where exactly are you in this house?
Are you somewhere inside it or outside it or are you everywhere in this house?
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We might have constructed hundreds of small and big rooms in our house over the years, representing not only each of our roles and identities but also having rooms that stand for the various stereotypes that we carry within, the various beliefs that we have about the world and all that we consider as the ‘other’ in it.
1.3.1) The lens of my ‘who’
How I see my ‘self’ or construct my ‘self’ determines what I see when I see the ‘other’. When I change my model of my self, I simultaneously also change my model of the other because I see the world only through the lens of my ‘who’. If I see my ‘self’ as my body, as a man, as Brown, as Black, as White, as an Indian, as an American person, and so on, then those are the kind of identities that I see when I see the other. Every time I see a specific identity as being more highlighted or pronounced in the other, it is actually a sign that I myself strongly identify with a similar identity within me.
1.3.2) The Not Identity
Identities by their very nature are dualistic objects, i.e., they only occur in pairs of interconnected opposites. Whenever I identify myself with a trait, an idea, a person, or a concept, I have also implicitly defined what it means to not be that identity. For instance, if I say (or identify with the identity) I am special, I implicitly define what I mean by being ordinary. Just like how I gravitate towards people, or situations, or interpretations that support and validate my being special identity, I also knowingly or unknowingly push away or become prone to judging people, actions, and behaviors that come under my definition of ordinary (…these are ordinary people, they have a traditional outlook, they just want an ‘average’ life…).
1.3.3) ‘Stereotypical Vision Disorder’
To have ‘stereotypical vision’ is to wrongly see and identify rich rounded ‘circles’ as tiny ‘square’ boxes! In other words, it is a disorder wherein a person reduces the rich and complex humanity of the ‘other’ to just a single limited identity, most commonly related to their religious belief, gender, ethnicity/nationality, skin-color, social status, and so on.
One of the primary causes of SVD is due to a faulty cognition that makes muddled correlations — that is, when we attribute a specific behavior of an individual to an unrelated generic identity, or when we make unrelated assumptions about what the behavior of a person ought to be based on a generic identity. For instance, someone with SVD might see one woman drive past rashly one day and make an absurd correlation that ‘women are bad drivers’. If instead, they see a man drive by in a similar rash way, they most likely might say ‘this man is driving so rashly’ and not attribute their rash driving behavior to their gender identity. In another instance, SVD is also made clearly visible every time someone assumes that if someone identifies as a woman they must have an innate skill in cooking and house-keeping; or that someone is likely to be violent, or cunning, or less trustworthy because they identify with a particular sect, religion, or nationality.
Stereotypes are nothing but socially-constructed, poorly-correlated, and over-generalized notions that somehow are able to take hold of our imagination and appear as ‘fixed’ and ‘natural’ to our minds.
1.3.4) Three necessary conditions for the creation of an -ism
Stereotypical Vision Disorder over the long term leads to the creation and sustenance of all the various -isms that plague (and have plagued) our society, like sexism, racism, imperialism, elitism/supremacism, and other new forms of -isms that our society will continue to create. For any -ism to be created, three necessary conditions have to be fulfilled or believed in:
I. Having a limited model of one’s own self as being their XYZ identity, i.e., having the belief I am my XYZ identity, that’s Who I am. [I am a Man]
II. Stereotyping and reducing the other into a limited identity and model of self, i.e., viewing the other as being their XYZ identity regardless of whether the other subscribes to a similar model of their self. [You are a Woman]
III. Believing in a hierarchical relationship between our identities. That is, not just merely believing that we have different identities but that there exists a hierarchy between them — my XYZ identity is superior or inferior to yours in a fundamental way. [Sexism — Men are better drivers than women]. All such beliefs are rooted in separateness. They arise due to both making muddled correlations and overgeneralizing them.
1.3.4) Revisiting the House
Keeping the above in mind, if I think of my house as being my ‘self’ or being a home to my ‘self’ then it is natural for me to always be on the lookout for safeguarding and protecting all that it holds. Any perceived attempt of someone belittling or reducing any of my identities is seen as an attack on my ‘self’ and therefore leads to an instant reaction from me which can sometimes (or often) be rash and disproportionate.
_______PART 2: Deconstruction of “I”_______
Last year, an article published in Washington Post got a huge backlash and provoked strong reactions because the author wrote (in a derogatory tone) that all Indian food is based on just one spice and that it basically sucks. The author later had to apologize and an edited version was posted.
I am sharing this because as someone who identifies as an Indian, this instance served as an example to me of how it can be so hard to treat our identities as objects created by us, and instead we can easily become subject to our own creations. When that happens, it’s likely that immediately after reading such an article I might want to react to the author, saying all kinds of things back to them (like many did on Twitter). But imagine if I could hold their beliefs as something arising out of who they are, what they know about the world (or in this case where they eat Indian food from!), along with holding my beliefs as coming from how I have constructed my Indian identity (as someone who loves the richness and variety of cuisines from all across India). I can then choose to respond by asking more questions and also not take their comments personally nor be personal in my response to them.
The key to responding rather than reacting lies in being able to hold my identities as objects or in other words being able to discern ‘Who am I?’ from ‘What am I?’.
2.1) Identifying the ‘Who’ and ‘What’
To further explore this distinction, let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario.
Think about how one might answer the question: ‘What is MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)?’. Now imagine if one day half the students, half the faculty and staff, half the equipment, and half the departments/buildings have vanished and are no longer there. In that case, it might not be incorrect for someone to say, “MIT is now half of what it was”.
But in the same way, what if half my body was not there someday, would I also be half of who I am? Probably not. I would still be there as whole as before, just with the added knowing that half my body is no more there.
Keeping this thought, let’s now go through another iteration of the activity described in the previous section. But this time we’ll engage in the deconstruction of our house, i.e., our sense of self, and notice what happens to our “I” at each step of this process. It might be helpful to be in a quieter and more reflective space (mentally and physically) for this part of the activity.
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2.2) Activity Prompt—Deconstructing your House
Let’s look again at the house that we had built during the first activity. Only for the period of this activity, let’s imagine that each of the roles and identities that form our house is vanishing one by one, imagine that we are losing or dropping these identities/objects from our “I”. The thought of dropping certain roles or identities might bring up a sense of loss, either of something physical or a loss of community or of belonging. This can be very hard but at the least, this exercise will help us empathize with people who actually live with those losses on a daily basis, and in addition, it might also help us know our self in a deeper way. As you continue on with this activity, you might experience some strong feelings, like that of loneliness or pain, but try even putting those aside for the moment.
Imagine losing your core identities one by one —
What if you did not identify as being Brown, Black, or White?
What if you did not identify with your Chinese, Indian, American, German, Brazilian, Jewish, or any other heritage?
If you imagine that these identities are no longer who you are, ask yourself, “Who am I now in this knowing?”.
What if you were also to lose your gender identity?
What if you lose the adjectives that have come to form the core of your self — lazy, smart, beautiful, special, ugly, efficient, responsible, introvert…..ask again, “Who am I now?”.
What if you were to drop away the expectations you have from yourself and from others?
What if you dropped away your regrets about the past and also any projections and concerns about the future?
Through all of this, just keep your attention at finding where you are or who you are at each of these steps. You will notice that there will always be something present to the absence of all of these. Is this ‘something’ like another room in your house? Could you also lose this or drop this like everything else?
We might notice and experience that this place or space or sense of presence that remains is inviolable by anything or anyone. Let us call this as Self (with a capital S), although we can choose to name it whatever we want or let it be as it is.
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Some things that may come to light by going through the activity:
- My house (“I”) holds all my ‘What’s’ — the roles and identities, thoughts and feelings, memories and experiences within, but I (as the Self) exist without.
- This Self is separate from all the roles that I play.
- It is identityless, i.e., colorless, genderless, historyless—essentially a selfless Self.
Is such a Self (that is like a holding space for my roles and identities)
different for me than that for the other?
_______PART 3: Reconstruction of “I”_______
All the little interactions or experiences that I have, regardless of their what, why, and how, have an impact on the dimension of my “Who”, i.e., to the existing model of my self. They either further solidify it, or change it, and some experiences can also forever transform it. This continuous process of the reconstruction of my self happens on two levels:
L1. self-Building: This is the reconstruction that happens at the level of the individual parts that make up my self, that is, to my roles and identities, changing their specific lines of code and what they mean for me. For example, seeing my dad act in a particular way might influence or change my definition of what it means to be a father, or what it means to be a man.
L2. self-Transforming: This level is about the reconstruction of the relationship of these parts to the whole, i.e., the relationship between my identities, self, and the Self. Changes at this level are much more significant as they transform the very “Who” that is undergoing the transformation. To better understand both how transformation happens and how to be intentional about it, we need to be able to make a clear distinction between our “Who” vs. our “What”, both of which are often confused and taken one for the other.
3.1) Distinguishing “Who am I?” from “What am I?”
A helpful way to make this distinction is by using the metaphor of wearing costumes. The answer to ‘What am I?’ includes all those beliefs, roles, and identities that I can see as being like costumes that I have and that I wear, and can update from time to time, whereas the “Who” is simply the one who gets draped in them. The look and feel of the costumes that I wear is largely defined by my culture, society, family, ancestry, etc., but it is I who ultimately gets to design, i.e., assimilate and shape them as an adult.
To understand this “Who” more clearly, let’s take an example. If say a young person through their experiences had picked up a strong belief that being rich and successful was an unquestioned purpose of life, then these (aspirational) identities of being rich and being successful are not like costumes to them but instead are their very skin to them. They currently are part of their “Who am I?” and not “What am I?”.
But these same identities became like costumes to me based on an experience I had as a young person. When I was 17, my elder brother had just finished his Masters in Computer Science from one of the world’s best universities and had received an offer to work for Amazon in Seattle at a really high salary at the time. But to my father’s dismay, he decided to (and stuck with his decision) to leave that and instead start working as a science teacher at a middle school in southern India for a thousand times less income of $100/month. That experience had a transformational effect on my self. Being rich and successful was no longer part of my “Who”. This belief became more like a “What” or a costume for me from that time on. They were no longer an unquestioned way of life for me. Similarly, my healthy disease-free body, my hair, or what I thought during my undergrad years as being my core personality traits — I can now easily see that they are not “Who” I am, but are closer to “What” I am. More formally, the distinction between the two can be stated as:
Being successful, being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian, being popular, being respected, being the best, being unique, being responsible, being considered as intelligent, being seen as physically beautiful or handsome, being liked — any such identities or notions could easily be an unquestioned way of being in someone’s current self definition and thus form a part of their “Who”. We are an order of magnitude more protective of identities that are part of our “Who” and even a seeming hint at reducing or disparaging them can lead to a strong reaction within us (BUT THIS IS WHO I AM!!!).
3.2) A valuable tool for self-Development—holding my ‘Who’ as a ‘What’
As we go about our lives every day, a variety of incidents and interactions can disturb us or act as a trigger in making us feel restless, even if in subtle ways. These actually are the ripest moments to inquire within — Who is feeling restless? Or in which of my (constructed) identities and roles, is this feeling arising? (e.g.: is it my male identity, my Indian identity, my well-respected/educated identity?).
If I think of my self in terms of…“I am an Indian”, “I am not Average”, “I am a Man”, “I am Angry”, “I am a Father”…I build a wall of dense concrete around those identifications and then I want to guard my fortress. But as I start moving from a I am _________ to a I hold/have _________ model of self (for example, I have anger, I have children that I father, I have the role of a CEO, I have an Indian cultural heritage…), the structure suddenly starts transforming from concrete to a more clay-like material that is more malleable, lighter, playful, and inclusive rather than exclusive.
3.3) self-Inquiry: a meditation into finding the self
Meditation can be seen as the practice of dropping our costumes one by one, until we reach a state of absolute nakedness, i.e., a state which cannot be dropped, which just is, and resting there. And as and when thoughts, related to our various roles and identities (of past, present, and future) arise, simply reminding oneself — ‘just my costume not me’ — ‘just my costume not me’ — and in this way keeping one’s attention steadfast towards finding the one who wears these costumes[5].
Sidenote: Making this distinction between the “Who” and the “What” in our model of the self is fundamental and one of the most central aspects in all of the spiritual traditions throughout the world. It is also referred to as the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka [6], i.e., inquiring into the distinction between the Seer and the Seen or the Subject and the Object [7]. Our “Who” forms the lens through which we perceive the “What”. Our interpretations and view of the world is bound to be incomplete if we only look at what we see and are oblivious to the who that sees.
3.4) Stages of ‘self’ Development
The development of our self can be seen as a continuous process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, but all of these are there only for the self and not the Self. Whatever is our current personal definition of the question, Who am I?, that constitutes our current model of our self. This is the ‘Who’ that keeps on learning and expanding in the process of growing up as children and maturing into adulthood and beyond. Every step taken on this self-Development journey not only brings us an increasing sense of harmony but also provides us with more freedom, confidence, and ease in our way of being.
Circling back to the metaphor of a house, this process can also be thought of as constructing our house on higher and higher slopes, with each shift enabling us to hold a richer and more expansive reality. As I continue on this journey, my definition of the self starts to expand beyond me, enabling me to hold much more than just my own roles and identities and encompassing the ‘other’ within me as the very concept of otherness starts to diminish into non-existence.
3.5) Bringing about a Copernican shift in the understanding of our self
I want to conclude this essay by sharing the allegory about the “Two fish and the water” [8].
Up until the 15th century, humanity swam in the water of—‘Earth being the center of the universe’ and then Copernicus changed that false reality for all of us forever. In a similar fashion, as an adult I unquestioningly organize my life around the central belief that I am my name, my roles and identities, that I am an individual among individuals — this is the water my ‘I’ swims in, day in and day out. It is apparent that to even have a possibility of bringing about a shift in this understanding of my self, I have to be my own Copernicus, as only I can take a dive within my self by making a sincere inquiry into the QUESTion—Who am I?
And the right time for this inquiry is always right NOW.
Our true self is limitless and selfless—it does not act from our various identifications, our past, our biases, but has the capacity to respond from our deeper presence, from our humanity. It is the very source of our true agency, of our creativity, kindness, and compassion. Its essence is the same as that of children engaged in unselfconscious play.
I humbly and gratefully acknowledge that the core essence of the ideas and themes I have expressed here flows in one way or another from the journeys of those in the past and present who have explored this question to its greatest depths.
— manuj@mit.edu
References:
1. Ramana Maharishi (1923), Nan Yar-Who am I?
2. Butler, J. (1991). Imitation and gender subordination.
3. Kegan, R. (1994) Figure 9.1 The five orders of consciousness, In Over Our Heads, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.
4. “Lines of Code” — Heifetz, Ronald, and Marty Linsky. Leadership on the line, with a new preface: Staying alive through the dangers of change. Harvard Business Press, 2017.
5. Ramana Maharishi (1923), The Practice of Self-Inquiry
6. Shankara (c. 1350), Drg-Drsya-Viveka, An Inquiry Into the Nature of the Seer and the Seen
7. Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Harvard University Press.
8. Foster., Wallace, David (2009). This is water: some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion about living a compassionate life. Kenyon College. (1st ed.). New York: Little, Brown.
