I’ve been thinking about the word identity lately.
It’s one of those words we rarely question.
We’re told to find it.
Protect it.
Express it.
Stay true to it.
But what if we’ve misunderstood what identity is for?
I wonder if one of the greatest sources of suffering is that we build our identity around the last place we stopped growing.
A belief.
A career.
A political view.
A relationship.
A success.
A failure.
A wound.
Over time, that branch becomes me.
So when life invites us to grow another branch, it doesn’t feel like growth.
It feels like loss.
Perhaps this is why changing our minds can feel so threatening.
We think we’re defending a belief.
What we’re really defending is the identity that formed around it.
Nature offers a different picture.
Every cell in your body has its own unique structure and purpose.
A muscle cell doesn’t become a neuron.
A neuron doesn’t become a skin cell.
Each has its own role.
Its own expression.
Its own contribution.
But no healthy cell mistakes itself for the whole body.
Its identity isn’t found in separation.
It’s found in participation.
The health of the cell depends on the health of the body.
And the health of the body depends on every cell participating in something larger than itself.
I wonder if we’re not so different.
Perhaps the goal of life isn’t to discover a fixed identity we must spend the rest of our lives protecting.
Perhaps it’s to become so deeply connected to reality that identity itself begins to soften.
Not disappear.
Transform.
From something we possess…
into something we express.
From something we defend…
into something we contribute.
The older I get, the less interested I am in asking,
“Who am I?”
I’m becoming more interested in asking,
“How shall I participate?”
Because every time life has invited me into a deeper truth, it hasn’t asked me to become someone else.
It has simply asked me to loosen my grip on the version of myself that could no longer grow.
Maybe that’s what a healthy identity looks like.
Not one that has finally figured itself out.
One that remains alive enough to keep growing toward the light.
