Blurred in Ambiguity

I recently realized that the task is not to find myself for how can I discover something that has never been lost to begin with. Rather, the endeavor is to accept, or love as Nouwen and Merton would posit, who I am; of course, this simple directive belies it arduousness. The first challenge is to see myself as I am. My persona has become like every other object out there, glazed with a thick sheen of my own hopes and biases. I must peal away the residue that I have projected onto my vision of myself to see more clearly. However, each time I attempt to do this, I am immediately unnerved by what comes into focus.

I intentionally blur my image so that no one--not even myself, can label me, fit me into a stereotype or a classification because as soon as these categories and descriptions are revealed to me, I am forced to acknowledge or deny them. If I deny them and they are accurate I run the risk of being disingenuous but if I acknowledge them, I have placed another stroke onto the canvas of my life that cannot be removed.

Ironically, on the journey to certainty there are many rest stops promising the comfort of ambiguity. As an example of this, when my hair first started to thin, I did what every man in his late twenties and early thirties would do--mask it beneath volumizing conditioners and gels. I even went as far as to purchase an over-the-counter formula for regenerating the hair follicles. Of course, it failed to give me the results I wanted. Finally, rather than spending precious time constructing elaborate comb-overs each morning, obsessively angling mirrors to see how the light penetrated through to my scalp, I shaved my head. I accepted my baldness. I looked myself in the mirror and said, 'I am a balding man.' It took a lot to admit that. Similarly, I finally started buying smaller sizes after years of buying mediums that hung off me like wet linens on a line. I looked at myself naked and finally saw myself as a short, skinny man But as difficult as these realizations where, they only represent the gateway to the path of self acceptance.

Because of the changing nature of our bodies as we grow, we are somewhat more accustomed to altering our perceptions of our external selves than we are of modifying our perceptions of our internal characteristics. In fact, as my body changes, I cling more fervently to the endearing internal sense of who I am; but in order to truly accept myself, this facade must also be torn down.

I have always seen myself as reflective, intellectual and often moving against the current of the mainstream but do my life choices bare this out. I work in a corporation, I live in a townhouse community in the suburbs, I own one safe car and one sports car and I shop at Banana Republic. What does this say about me? If I am putting up any resistance to the mainstream; it is decidedly passive. I console myself with the notion that I am not swimming, arm over arm, with the current--but even that would be more authentic than just bobbing in the flow as I do.

The fact is, I am not reflective; I am analytical, and there is an important distinction that can be blurred in ambiguity. The reflective person pulls to the side of the road to look back at where she has been, whereas the analytical person simply slows down to hypothesize the more efficient path forward. I can't write like Merton because I do not think like Merton. I am no intellectual, I intentionally surround myself with people who are focused on practice and not theory. I live on the left bank of the Schuylkill, not the Seine. And what's more, I don't even try that hard. I am no more driven than the person who takes the time to shuffle some papers around when he hears his boss walking down the halfway.

Of course, there may be others who have gotten a leg up and owe their current circumstances to who they know or who their parents knew but they too have to accept themselves and must account for how they came to be where they are. As for me, I am sure that my race, my gender and my father's middle income status have played a significant part in bringing me to this point. But I am responsible for all of it, even the things I cannot change. That is why the second step is acknowledgement without the promise of change. It is easy to acknowledge a circumstance if you believe that by acknowledging it you can better alter it; it is another endeavor entirely to acknowledge a characteristic about yourself that is immutable.