Who Am I?

Courage to Question, Faith to Find the Answer

"We have all forgotten what we really are." —G. K. Chesterton

After being homeschooled for two years, my seven-year-old daughter entered second grade at our local elementary school.

Like any mom, I was an odd bundle of anxieties that first day. Would she be scared? Would she make friends? And perhaps more realistically, Would she be so accustomed to homeschooling that she wouldn't be able to adapt and end would up being the "problem" child? If I'm honest, I suppose I was mostly afraid that I would end up getting called to the principal's office to explain why my daughter expected to take a field trip once a week and thought that math class should involve baking.

But like most fears, mine ended up being largely unfounded and somewhat self-centered. Things went smoothly. Her first day was spent like anyone else's in getting to know the teacher, meeting her classmates, and establishing classroom rules and routines. Everything was flowing along nicely until her teacher turned to the class and asked, "Does anyone have any questions?"

Immediately my Phoebe's hand shot up.

"I have a question," she responded with all seriousness. "Why are we here? I mean, why are we like this? Why do we have hands and why do we sit in desks and why do we go to school? Why do we have feet? And why do we have to listen? Why are we made this way? Why? I just want to know, Why?!"

So much for keeping a low profile as the new kid.

When my friends heard about it as was inevitable in our small town, there were a lot of teasing comments with most of them to the effect of "like mother, like daughter." And while it is true that she comes by her philosophical disposition honestly, I think I would have found it funnier if her questions hadn't hit so close to home. Her questions—her need to understand herself and her place in this world—are the very same questions that each of us wants to have answered too. Despite being grown adults, how many of us wish we could just raise our hand like a little girl on the first day of school and ask, "Who am I and why am I here?"

Searching for Ourselves

This need to understand ourselves, to wrestle with who we are and where we fit in the world, is fundamentally a search for identity. It is a journey to discover, not some foreign land or distant galaxy, but a world much closer—one whose very proximity can make it all the more mysterious, profound, and quite frankly, dangerous. It is a search, not simply to discover what it means to be a woman, but more important: what it means to be a person, what it means to be you.

But because this search can be unsettling, we tend to avoid it the same way we avoid looking full-faced into the mirror. Instead of wrestling with the deeper questions of life, we distract ourselves and find identity in things like relationships, jobs, political causes, or hobbies. We check boxes, make lists, and categorize ourselves by race, religion, and socioeconomic status. We calculate our bodies in pounds, inches, and clothing sizes, all in an effort to gain the security that comes from knowing exactly who we are and where we fit into the grand scheme of things. After all, if I know that I am a married, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, extroverted, mother of three who studied liberal arts, writes, likes to travel, watches classic movies, and enjoys long walks on the beach, then certainly I must know who I am, right? Right?

Unfortunately, while roles and categories provide us some measure of stability in an uncertain world, the problem comes when these things change, as they inevitably do. The loss of a job, a broken marriage, unexpected illness, infertility, or churches that fail us. And suddenly the questions we had succeeded in repressing flood back to the surface. For Phoebe, it was something as simple as transitioning from home to school—suddenly her world shifted and she found herself needing to affirm the most basic realities of her life.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, good times can initiate the search for identity as often as bad. When we finally get that new job or finish that graduate degree; when we meet that someone we've been waiting to spend the rest of our life with; when the babies come and we're able to nurture our hopes and dreams with them. Even in these moments, as we come down from the emotional high, we realize that they didn't fulfill us the way we had expected; despite having invested so much of ourselves in what we thought would provide a lasting sense of meaning, we hardly know ourselves in the midst of it. We begin to feel detached and distant, outsiders looking in on our own lives. And the things that we once looked to for stability and identity begin to feel like burdens and obligations instead of blessings.

Just ask Elizabeth Gilbert.

By anyone's standard's, Elizabeth's life was a success; she had graduated from the best schools, had a terrific career that took her around the world, and together with her husband owned an impressive home in New York's Hudson Valley. And yet, she spent most nights crying herself to sleep only to awaken with the persistent awareness that little about her life made sense. She felt overwhelmed by duty and directionless about her future. So at a young thirty-two, she checked out. She divorced her husband, threw herself into a dysfunctional relationship, and eventually quit her job to travel the world. Her journey took her through Italy and India and all the way to Indonesia; she sampled la dolce vita in Rome and Tuscany and committed herself to religious asceticism in a Hindu ashram—all in an attempt to find some sense of personal stability, some sense of lasting identity.

Elizabeth shared her journey in a memoir she called simply Eat, Pray, Love. Within weeks, it hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list, popped up in book clubs everywhere, and went on to sell over ten million copies. And that's when it became startlingly clear: Elizabeth was not alone. Elizabeth was not the only woman feeling lost and directionless. In fact, women today—despite our education, despite our independence, despite our relationships—have yet to really answer the most basic questions about our own identities. Worse still, we seem to have very little idea about...