Conversations with Ourselves-The Question

I love conversation. I love the interaction, mingling, sharing, and even merging of thoughts produced by conversing with one another. It is a way in which we can grow together. Of course there are many pitfalls to conversations in which I will not get into today (name-calling, being argumentative,  miscommunication, assumptions, etc.). I want to focus on the power of conversation and especially on self reflection.

(H/T to McGrath from Exploring Our Matrix for sharing this photo).

Self reflection is something which I enjoy so much it's almost second nature to me. Asking questions is what guides me through my daily
self reflection moments. I am a thinker, and I always will be. I can get lost for hours down the rabbit hole following question after question. I can't help myself from asking questions, to think and wrestle with those questions and see what (or, more importantly, who) emerges. Answers are too easy, and easy answers can be messy and come with strings attached. But when you wrestle with a question, you come from the experienced a changed person. Not necessarily good or bad ( that's too black and white) but a changed person, a new creation. There are no easy answers to life, although some of us may feel better with easy answers, being human is an experience which must be experienced. And with each experience we are transformed, with each thought and wrestling we become something new, and in our actions we create a space for new things to flourish. THAT creative space is what I used to call God and what I still hold sacred.

So the question I ask others, but mostly myself, is "who are you, really?" For me THIS is the question which catapulted me into a sea of questions. Are we merely a collection of experiences, memories, genetic code, characteristics? Are we afraid to ask, or afraid to discover? What if we discover something about yourself which causes us shame and embarrassment, what then? What if what we are is completely alien from what we've been told since childhood? How do we wrestle that? How do we live? How do we be human? How do we love? The questions can go on and on, and we can either wrestle and learn to live WITH them, or we can take the easy prepackaged answer.

So who are you, really?

Part 1) Conversations with Ourselves: The Question
Part 2) Conversations with Ourselves: The Internal Struggle
Part 3) Conversations with Ourselves: The External Struggle
Part 4) Conversations with Ourselves:  Reflections on Who We Were
Part 5) Conversations with Ourselves: Making Peace with Chaos
Part 6) Conversations with Ourselves: Making Sense of It All