I Went Through an Identity Crisis and Came Out Without an Identity
And I’m all the better for it.
In my younger years, I was an athlete. Frankly, that’s all I was. I dreamt of the big stage, playing in front of thousands of people and seeing countless fans with my name on their back. I believed I was special because I had to believe that in order to keep my dream alive. I practiced as often as I could, often neglecting my other responsibilities, and ultimately became a rather one dimensional person. I only spoke of one thing, everything I did was in someway related to one thing, and I only ever thought of my future within that activity. Being an athlete was my identity, until it no longer could be.
During my high school years, and my days on the AAU circuit, I ran into one coach who placed me outside of my comfort zone. That is to say he benched me. Growing up in a small school and mainly playing with my friends and them alone, this was a concept that was foreign to me. Not that being benched in it of itself was frightening, but the realization that I wasn’t a special athlete, was. My whole life up until that point had been lived with the assumption that I was next in line, that one day all my hard work would pay off and I would get the recognition I so desperately desired, because it had to. I lived each day assuming that at one point I would achieve everything I had wanted to within the sport, simply because I didn’t know what to do if it didn’t. But for the first time, I was faced with the realization that it would not work.
Now, I’m sure this all sounds a bit overdramatic, but as anyone attempting to earn an athletic scholarship today can tell you, you give up a lot in trying to do so. I spent many of my summers, at basketball camps, and I dropped all other sports because I figured I had to work year round in this specific one. But the worst part, at least when you come from a small school, is everyone tells you that you are special. You are constantly told by those around you that you are meant for great things, not only reinforcing your arrogant beliefs, but validating them. I felt as if I had proof that I was special, because everyone that I had known, (teachers, coaches, friends, and parents) told me that I was. All of this is to say, I was very cemented in who I was meant to be, I had no doubts that one day all of this would payoff. In fact, I watched many of my friends from other schools go of to college with athletic scholarships, and I simply assumed I was next. Quickly, and abruptly, I found out that I wasn’t.
After a rather rough stretch, I took a break from the sport, and immediately was faced with the question of “who am I?”. I was no longer who I had always thought myself to be, but I certainly put all of my eggs in one basket. I had other interests, but again I had pored myself into one activity, so I hadn’t really given anything else the time of day. So for a while, I just pretended that nothing had changed. I acted the same, said that this was just a temporary setback, and pushed through so to speak. However, I could only keep this act up for so long. It got to the point where I felt entirely aimless, and when you feel entirely aimless, everything feels like an enormous waste of time. Nothing is gratifying, and you wander through life with a disguise covering you the entire time, because you would rather do that than admit it’s a big deal. Fortunately, I had to admit that, and even more fortunately, I had an adult who I could confide in, my AP Lit teacher. Strange, I know, but I had truly enjoyed her class, and we weren’t close enough for her to have any preconceived notions of me. She knew who I was, but really by name only, she was too disconnected from athletics to know anything other than the fact that I played basketball. We talked for a while, and the conversation itself was helpful, but what truly helped me, is her recommendation to turn to philosophy.
Previously, I had no interest. I saw the field as strictly pretentious and nothing more, but being in an unfamiliar circumstance makes you a bit more open to unfamiliar things. Since my free time was much more abundant than it was in the past, I dove on in. I read everything I could get my hands on, from Kierkegaard, to Nietzsche, to Camus, and Sartre. At that time (still today but specifically at such a vulnerable time), reading the words of globally recognized geniuses brought me a great amount of comfort. It sounds strange to say, I know, but the fact that they were identifying logical truths was almost relaxing. Just to know that I could use these principles in my everyday life, not merely one some court, but everywhere I went. I grew to admire many of them, Albert Camus becoming my favorite, but I still didn’t have an identity. Until I stumbled upon David Hume.
I still remember sitting at the library, reading with my headphones in, when I first read the lines, “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.” This floored me. I had spent my life believing (ignorantly I’ll admit), that I had to be one definable thing. An athlete, a writer, a businessman (in that vague definition that a young man has of it). But the idea that all of those thing were merely occupations, and lacked any defining power was, Liberating. I finally could simply relax and be me. I no longer had an unyielding allegiance to one thing, I stopped feeling as if I needed to find some world in which I belonged. I was able that there was no world in which I belonged, and then embrace the absurdity of that, as Camus would say. I lived the next few years pursuing my every interest as it arose, I no longer dismissed them as trivial simply because they didn’t fit in with who I believed myself to be. I let myself be whoever I was feeling like that day. Somedays I still played basketball, some days I read Michel De Montaigne’s Essays, some days I played Pokémon, and some days I watched old movies with my parents. I didn’t force myself into a box, and I finally had the confidence to allow myself to be whoever I was on any given day. I let myself wander, but I never did it aimlessly. A respected philosopher had told me that personal identity was a fallacy, and I have lived better ever since.
The final thing I would like to say, is that this is not an excuse to not attempt to progress. In the time since this realization, I have moved up within my job, enrolled in college, and finished half of my degree program. This is not me bragging, honestly that would be a pretty lame attempt at doing so, just pointing out that you can live a functional life without a distinct identity. Don’t abandon society and become a hermit, just let yourself be who you are everyday, without an allegiance to what you believe yourself to be.
