An age-old question

I know this seems like a campy question, but I am legitmately seeking noncampy answers. Lately, I’ve been struggling with this. And I know your answers can’t and won’t help me determine mine, but maybe I can understand if this is something others struggle with as well.

It’s tough because an easy answer, for me at least, would be to say something like “I find my identity in being a father and a husband.” But I’ve only had those titles for barely three years. What was my identity before that? Did I not have one? Of course, I did. It was probably just a very self absorbed one(s). But isn’t that the point of an identity — that it’s yours? Like that is the one thing you can be selfish about…am I right? Then, why as a now soon to be father to two and a very happily married husband do I only feel like I can lock into these two titles for myself?

Is it that any other parts of me that I used to claim as my identity don’t matter any more? Don’t matter as much? Or maybe those things still do matter, they just aren’t as accessable as they once were. I think that might be it.

Let’s say for example I find my identity in my friends, which I think at one point in our lives (or maybe for a large portion of our lives) is a fair assesment of what we claim as our identity. Well, nowadays I can tell you that I can count on one hand the amount of times over the past month or two that I’ve spent quality time with a friend(s). It’s just hard to do with work and home and family life and extended family life and budgets and scheduling and so on.

Or maybe I find my identity in my dreams or my passions or my interests. Is Netflix an interest? Srsly. No. I can’t tell you the last time I worked on the next great American novel (it’s obviously still unfinished.) Or that I wrote a poem. Or sung a song. Or learned a new skill (besides evacuating a child's excrement from an otherwise very pleasant Johnson & Johnson bubble bath [let’s face it, my wife totally had to step in and handle that situation]). Or committed to finish or start or stay on top of any of the creative outlet ideas I concoct, be it a blog or a podcast, or a cartoon strip. Nope, I don’t think I can assign an identity to the things I’d like to get around to doing.

I guess I could find my identity in work, but that’s always felt so … I don’t know, I feel like people who say that are either people like Alec Baldwin’s character from ‘Glengary Glenross’ or a teacher or a doctor or something like that, and I am none of those.

I can give a churchy answer and say that I find my identity in Christ, but I would kindly direct myself to read the first sentence of this post again. I mean look I know that it IS true that if I am a Christian (and I am) that Christ is my identity, but if I am honest with myself I don’t say things like that and I don’t really feel like that a lot of times. Plus, it still feels like I am not properly assigning enough of my self/me/my to my identity. Like I already have the father and husband tag going, do I really have to add one more bit of MY identity to somone else?

But maybe that’s part of growing up. Maturing. Giving of oneself to others. Giving up. Giving over. A loss of self for a greater gain sort of thing? That’s probably it.

I don’t know. I still think I need to continue to explore the aspects that make me me. Maybe my identity can be found in that, too: the relentless pursuit of my me.