Who am I?

 "Who am I? Where am I? Where shall I go? Ask yourself these three questions every day." This is the advice I got when I asked someone for advice regarding spirituality. Over time I started asking myself more questions. But one question I ask daily is, "Who am I?". The answer I get is half-cooked, incomplete, and yet better than yesterday. 

I am bits and pieces of everyone who touched my life for better or worse. I am the lessons I learned from the mistakes of my mentors. It's almost like I am no longer one person but many in one. I am every book I have ever read, every leaf I have touched. I am also the sensation of sand that I hate so dearly. I am also my fear of letting my thoughts out in the world by writing this.  I am my ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in my head at the same time without going insane. I am my sensitivity that irritates some and fascinates others. What makes a person them? their thoughts? their behaviours? their intentions? their habits? And what changes them into a whole other person? 

Perhaps I am a mere example of Osmosis. I express my anger in the opposite way of my father. I am my mother's liveliness and poetry. I am my brother's humour. I am my Didi's determination and ability to challenge the whole world. I am the discipline I learned from one of my mentors. I am my ever-growing ability to accept my emotions the way I learnt from someone I once loved. I am the maturity of my best friend and her forgiveness for the shit I have put her through. Who am I if not everyone I have ever loved and everyone who loves me? 

Who am I? Over time I have noticed I can change myself to who I wish to be by changing the answer to "Who am I?" And yet I have absolutely no idea who I truly am.

                                                                                              -Anshu Rajput

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