Who and why am I?

We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here because...

Rocky Mountain National Park

I am a researcher. Scientist. Programmer. Musician. Hiker. Artist. Runner. Filmmaker. Writer. Pizza-maker. Plushie collector. Odd sock enthusiast.

These are what I do, not who I am. They are my occupations.

I am a sibling. Friend. Child. Adult. Coworker. Employee. Neighbor. Fanatic. Introvert. Citizen. Man.

These are how I interact with others, not who I am. They are my social roles.

I am talkative. Inattentive. Optimistic. Forgetful. Compassionate. Egotistical. Messy. Kind. Naive. Strong. Forgetful. Fearful. Obsessive. 22. Anxious. Introverted. Lonely. Content. Needy. Lucky. Grateful. Queer. Restless. Selfish. Supportive. Alive.

These are categories I fit into, not who I am. They describe me, but they do not wholly define me.

I am a grilled-cheese sandwich.

…just kidding. I am not really a grilled-cheese sandwich. Nor am I a bird, a plane, or Superman. I am also not a ladybug, paperclip, sequoia, or Airbus A380 quad-engine high-capacity passenger airplane. Hopefully this clears up a few common misconceptions.

I am a mammal. I am a member of the primate species Homo sapiens. I am a large mass of cells which knows it is a large mass of cells. I am a group of atoms that can feel love. These all strike me as very cool categories to fit into.

I don’t know who I am. I can tell you a thousand words that describe different projections of me, but when I look for the source of those projections, I find nothing. Perhaps the shadows on the cave wall truly are the whole world! Perhaps my identity is like a quantum particle, and measuring it changes it. In this case, I ought to learn to be okay with uncertainty.

Not knowing my identity is scary. Sometimes I try to alleviate this anxiety by inventing a fake identity and convincing myself it is real. Usually I cobble these identities together from stolen pieces of others’ identities. I define myself based on externalities and allow myself to believe this is a viable long-term approach. Deep down, I know it is not.

I have a friend who has a remarkable sense of identity and purpose. They do not relate much to what I’ve written above. They have a clear internal sense of who they are and what they want out of life. They are happy and display remarkable resilience in the face of adversity. I’d like to become more like that. I think I am, but it is slow going.

Many people tell me what they believe my identity is. Most mean well, but I do not think they are any more capable of defining me than I am. Often, their assessments tell me more about them than they do about me. Their characterizations reveal what they pay attention to.

Some folks spend billions of dollars to learn what people pay attention to. I think that’s kind of a silly way to spend billions of dollars.

I have no purpose. Sometimes that feels scary. Other times it feels freeing.

Sometimes I assign myself the purpose of Being As Happy As I Can. This strikes me as the most “natural” purpose to have. To fulfill it, I must walk in-between hedonism and asceticism. Hedonism maximizes short term pleasure but sacrifices long-term pleasure. Asceticism minimizes short term pleasure and sacrifices long-term pleasure. I see these philosophies as two ends of a Pareto frontier. The optimal strategy is likely a compromise between them.

I understand that “I don’t know my identity” is a bit of a pedantic cop-out — like, obviously, it depends on what definition I use for “identity”. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I’ve been increasingly feeling as though I am simply afloat on a great ocean current. I can swim a little distance in any direction, so I convince myself that means I can go anywhere — but in reality, the scale of the current dwarfs any agency I may have. Where I begin and end is already mostly predetermined.

There’s a famous thought experiment: imagine you were born to nationalist German parents in the 1910s. Would you have grown up to be a Nazi? Same genetics, same “soul”, but wildly different circumstances. And the answer is, obviously: yes, you would almost certainly have grown up to be a Nazi.

Wrestling with this makes me anxious. I have spent most of my life believing a certain narrative about myself: “My choices matter; I deserve my successes and failures; I am a Good Person™.”

But if I had been born in Nazi Germany, I would have become a Nazi instead of a Good Person™. The uncomfortable truth is that my Good Person™-hood is more a product of things outside my control than of things within it. It was pure random chance that I was born in the time, place, and family that I was born in.

I don’t have answers—I don’t really think the questions I am asking in this post are the sort that even have answers. But I felt like writing about them anyways.

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a nice day.