A Question of Identity

Sitting in a room, almost in isolation and the question comes to raise its head. What is an identity? On a level of uncertainty about how to answer this my thoughts turn to the realm of how I rely on others to fulfill specific needs. Here I sit, an individual, with needs, desires, expectations, fears, anger, all of which feel to be isolated from the rest of the social world. These are mine without reliance upon others. Or so it feels. But on a deeper level each of these needs, desires, expectations, etc. all involve someone else. To desire love is to to desire that love with or from another. To be afraid is to be afraid of a reaction or expectation of someone or something else. The need relates to an 'other' of some sort, though this need reflects itself back upon the self I believe to be. So here I sit asking what is this self. In Buddhist terms the 'self' is not any real sentient being but a construction of interdependencies, a development of grasping onto that which I hold dear, or abhor the most. At every moment these needs and desires, angers and fears come into view then pass into nothingness. They are not the self, nor are they capable of defining a self for they themselves are full of their own constructions that come and pass. On a physiological level how would I define the self. I am a conglomeration of parts, of skin and cells, blood and bones. At root I am a compound of atoms, atoms which themselves are nothing more than space, protons, electrons, neutrons, quarks, etc. What of the psychological level? I am a consciousness, but what does this mean? I have memories, some of which I know not to be mine, but were given to me through stories and that I have made my own. Regardless of which, do these memories constitute my identity? or even a self that I can call my own? I am tired of typing at this time so I will send a farewell to the post knowing that this is only the beginning of a long path of indentifying an identity.

This Change

In the past recent days and weeks I have been surrounded by the prospects and inevitibility of change. Sometimes the change has been to source of choice, other times it has been the result of simply being alive. In almost all cases it has aroused emotions and responses that are less then what one would consider happy or healthy. There have been family members lashing out at each other, friends who have been forced into a sort of exile, questions of mortality and feelings that are best summed up by Franti's lyric "to feel alone like a tree in a desert." Change can be hard, especially when it touches us in a way that we may lose something that is dear to us or when it leaves the sense of having to go through something on our own.

On my way home today a song came onto my ipod from a concert that Beth and I attended back in 02/03 in Eugene Oregon. These are the lyrics:

You don't have to run away
From the bad things you've done to me
You don't have to run away, from the pain and the misery
You can cross this by land you know
Take a boat or you can fly
You can just lay down in the river you know
Lay your head back and just float on by

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

So take that bag you carry
Open it up and take a look inside
There might be some angels living there
Maybe even a little bit of suicide
Take all them things you own now
And throw them into the riverside
And say goodbye to the things you know
Say goodbye to the other side

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

I say
I walk right into the storm

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

Peace

Oh how time slips away

Sitting here tonight with Bruce Hornsby playing in the background, the melody of life slipping by with each note settling within the folds of the tapestry that we all breathe in. It has been some time since this site of reflection was opened. This has been a time of rest and relaxation, of reflection and study. Part of the study has continued to be the past, though this is not a past that is stuck in the death tolls of history, but is ever present in the living moment, constantly shifting under the gaze of the reader. What was life like for the family living along the frontiers between the Ottoman sultanate and the Persia, or on the borderlands of European monarchies? To be a Muslim in Pest, Belgrade, or marching towards the gates of Vienna? To be an Orthodox Christian in the heart of Islam? These are not questions of the state, but of the lives of people. Questions that are still resonating with us today. Questions whose vibrations have been felt beneath the iron gates of Milosevic, raised by the tensions within the Israeli-Palestinian walls. What is Islamic art if separated from Persian and Byzantium influences? These are the study of life not only in the past, but in present America, that sit behind globalization and the shrinking world of instant communication. What did it mean when Ben Franklin stated, "There never was a good war or a bad peace"?

The beginning of the middle that ends where it started

And so the digital age is working one step closer to crawling under my skin, entering my dreams, and finding its way to the expression of the soul, the mind, the ramblings of a professional student of life, love, and the pursuit of mystery. Welcome all!!! In each living moment we have a hope which lies within our emotions, our feet, our smiles and fears. The hope of Pandora's box is the essence of our actions towards decreasing our carbon imprint upon a stressed mother, of spending more and gathering more to our abodes in temporary insanity. Our hopes guide us to spirits, lead us to science, reach out for children, and gather armies. It may lead to what feels right only to find what is wrong. Perhaps Nietzsche was correct to state "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man." A failed hope may be the broken heart of love where all efforts were led to the clinging on of what prayerfully will be, forgetting to nurture that which is with us now. Hope is always in the future where uncertainty lies in enternal waiting, distracting us from the value of the present moment. As Thomas Merton once said, "Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything." And so the first howl leaves tonight an echo to hope. What is left is the work, the connection to the present, the relationship itself, the blog. Peace to the Noble Wolves.