A Different Self, A Different Society

“Who am I?” It’s a strange thing, how the answer to this question eludes us even as it drives us to build our lives the way we do, always striving to protect or solidify some “functional” sense of self. Taking society’s lead, many people fill in this blank with doing, and they come to associate what they do with who they are. There can be value in this. If what we do in our lives is in alignment with our true nature, if it honours our experience and our wisdom (and we are ALL wise in our own ways), then perhaps it is not such a miss to associate doing with being. On the other hand, if what we do is not in alignment with that deeper part of ourselves, then it seems to me to be a dark tragedy to allow ourselves to become something that is so far from who we really are. Unfortunately, we live in a society that coerces many people into situations where much of what they do does not at all honour who they truly are. While some people are content with what they are doing, countless others are caught in a trap of meeting expectations and obligations that they neither enjoy nor agree with. Many others believe they are doing something that is an honest expression of who they truly are, but the image of self that they are serving is really nothing more than an implant, often one meant to serve the system rather than the individual. I don’t think it would be farfetched to suggest that many of modern civilization’s most toxic behaviours would vanish if people were given the opportunity to understand themselves more and commit to work that resonated with their core values and deeper needs. The end result of millions of upon millions of people serving a superficial system that seeks only to perpetuate itself is inevitably imbalance and destruction. This is the reality of our current situation, and the destructive nature of this modality of existence is something that no informed person can deny. “Who are we?” We are so reluctant to prescribe our own answers to this question, and yet we let society prescribe them for us in ways that shape our entire existence. We strive to construct our lives in ways that serve a definition of self- and other- that is ultimately contingent on functionality within both the cultural and economic apparatuses of our society. If this is who we are, then we are nothing more than ghosts living in the shadow of a terrible machine that is destroying the planet. What if… What if we decided that there was a different answer to this question, one that didn’t stem from our conditioning, from our governed experiences? What if, instead of teaching people from a young age that who they are depends on what they do, that we encouraged them to look inside and openly share their feelings and thoughts, and then worked at creating and strengthening communities in ways that honoured those feelings and thoughts? What if we placed less emphasis on self as an isolated entity? Or, what if we decided that each of us is a manifestation of the sublime energy that animates all life? What if we decided that who we truly are, each and every one of us, is nothing less than divinity itself? What would society look like then?