Child, This Is You.

This is a problem I’ve been having lately. I don’t really know who I am. I know what I am, adjectives. But I think there may be a difference in knowing what I am like and knowing what that ‘I’ is. The book I’ve been reading lately, Sophie’s World, has either helped or made things worse and I haven’t decided which yet. I guess it showed me my options. I’m not done with the book yet, about 150 pages left to go so I can’t draw any conclusions yet.

(see Souvenir for an incomplete list of adjectives, by the way)

One of the things I love is language. I don’t know really why I love it so, but it is consuming at times. But language fails. As it is me right now. Anytime I begin to think about who I am, all the words and phrases and fragments that come to mind are in the what category. Even with the “ideal” Christian-ese answers.

[Who are you? I am a most beloved child of the Most High, Sovereign, and Beautiful King of All. No. I said who are you, not what.]

So is there really any difference between them? I think perhaps our language has been twisted. Because I can answer the what question in two different ways, unlike the who question.

[What are you? I am mostly carbon and water. I am minerals and proteins and compounds and molecules and water. OR I can answer in the same way as most of us answer the who question.]

I think I just changed my mind about some things. Knowing what I am like (subjectively and objectively, meaning, what I think and what God thinks) is knowing who I am, or better, who I am capable of being. Knowing what I am is knowing, well, what I am. Or of what I am literally made.

So.

I know pieces of who I am.

Or, maybe it’s just that I notice the rotten pieces a lot more than I notice the sweet pieces.

Or maybe it’s that I give the rotten pieces a lot more weight in my mind and heart than the sweet pieces.

Maybe it’s both.

Or maybe it’s Maybelline.

(hint: it’s not Maybelline.)