Message in a (Green) Bottle

Who are you? Who you are.

May 24, 2023

Hello everyone and welcome back to Your-weekly-thought-provoking-article.

The theme of today is “identity.”

On the surface, it is an answer to the question of “who are you?”

But just because it is AN-answer doesn’t mean it is THE-answer to that question.

Identity is an incredibly nuanced topic and depending on the context can lead to a variety of feelings. On one hand, it can evoke sensations of empowerment, community, and confidence. On the other hand, it can also bring about feelings of frustration, shame, and confusion.

A lot of times, where the differentiations occurs depends on perception.

And then based on that perception, there are varying degrees of earned and unearned wisdom that comes with - identity.

Today’s Lineup:

Experiment
Side A - A Lost History
Side B - Identity vs Essence
Side C- Surrendering Identity

EXPERIMENT

This week’s experiment is a short writing exercise.

Imagine . . .

You’re on an island.

You have a (green) bottle, a piece of paper, and a writing utensil.

You’re going to write a letter to put in the bottle to throw out to sea.

You don’t know who is going to read it.

On this note to a mysterious stranger,

Introduce yourself WITHOUT using:
- Your name.
- Your relationship to other people.
- Your job title or what you do for work.
Be specific as possible.

Ideally, the goal would be if, somehow, someone you know found this letter and they could guess that you wrote it. That would be perfect.

SIDE A - A Lost History

Kellen: With every alternative there is a renunciation.

AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Month has ignited reflection upon my identification as Asian American.

Becoming Asian American has led to an accumulation of unearned wisdom about my identity – it is what has been lost regarding my cultural identity (a casualty of unearned wisdom) contributing to unavailable and out of conscious parts of my history.

The unearned wisdom about who I am and where I come from has contributed uncertainty, hesitation and confusion about myself.

Becoming Asian American means giving up identities, or even being told to embody certain identities at the expense of others. Instead of existing in multiplicity, we are reduced to singularity and categorizations that deprive us of nuance.Steven Yuen questioned whether the Asian American experience is “what it’s like when you’re thinking about everyone else, but nobody else is thinking about you.”

A powerful sentiment that many can relate to, not only Asian Americans. Anyone that has had their identity minimized and parts of themselves renounced at the expense of convention, expectation and/or assimilation are impacted by this.

In an attempt to take more control over my own identity I have remained curious while being active in pursuing narratives about my past. Questioning the ways in which certain narratives have been disavowed even though they could be perceivably plausible.

Myka: There is an interesting distinction between being-something and becoming-something. When I went away to college from Hawaii to Colorado, there was a sensation of" “becoming” Asian American. Despite "being” the same person I always was.

Hawaii may not be the dream-like cultural melting pot that everyone identifies it as, but it is still hilariously diverse.

Growing up, that diversity was just a natural part of life. Within my own family, my cousins were all different ethnicities than me (Hawaiian-mixed-all kine stuff). My neighbors were different than me. My best friends were more ethnicities than I could remember.

Ethnicity was a form of identification - a means of distinction as opposed to an interpretation or being of character.

The Chinese-lady that walks her dog in the morning. Or that old Filipino-guy that sits out with his friends. These things were just different characteristics of different people.

My lived in Asian-ness was more like a name-tag than it was a life story. And like a name-tag I could clip it on and off. On for when people didn’t know me. Off for when people learned who I was.

However, after going to away to school on the mainland - suddenly, the name tag had a different weight to it. It became an identity - something I couldn’t take off. And it was confusing. People approached me as if I couldn’t speak English (despite being an English Major) and the people that were quick to embrace me were mostly other Asians who felt the need to help assimilate me (which, shoutout to those friends that I made when I needed them) but overall, it was an odd experience.

I didn’t “feel” Asian-American until there was a distinction to being one. Which, got even weirder when I came back to Hawaii and saw everyone acting more or less in the same ways as before I left.

To echo Kellen again, with every alternative there is a renunciation.

Kellen: Earning wisdom is developing the capacity to hold multiple truths simultaneously. Rather than reduce, create. In this there is the cycle of life and death, a constant destruction and reconstruction of what we know and how we relate that continues in perpetual motion.

What we know is not static. It is alive and ever changing. Unearned wisdom becomes stiff and narrow, while earning wisdom promotes flow and movement.

SIDE - Identity vs Essence

Myka: Within story telling and narrative structure, particularly in the case of the “hero’s journey,” the plot follows as the protagonist (main character) grows from a place of potential-hero-ness to actual-hero. Many times, the path toward becoming a hero doesn’t involve gaining anything new, but rather unlocking something inert or by letting go of unnecessary weight.

For some, this is a dynamic process between two energies called identity and essence.

Identity is what we think of and call ourselves.

Essence is what we actually are. It is more than just identification.

“Character development” is what happens as a character sheds identity in order to embody essence.

To the Marvel fans out there . . .

An easy example of this is Thor Odinson, god of thunder, jacked dude, etc, etc.

All of those things are details pertaining to his identity. His birthright, his royalty, to some extent his powers, were all unearned elements that were bestowed upon him.

As he discovers himself and embraces who he really is - the worthy and righteous god of thunder, he sheds those things that pertain to his identity and embodies his truest potential. He lets go of his unearned identity in order to earn his essence.

Kellen: It seems counterintuitive, but learning about ourselves is a process of renunciation and surrender as much as addition and creation. We must learn that adding or forcing ourselves into certain expectations in facts costs us our relationship with our essence.

We must unlearn as much as learn.

SIDE C - Surrendering Identity

Myka: Today’s experiment is meant to be an exercise in letting go of identity. Name, job title, who we know, who we are related to, or whose significant other we are - all those things are forms of useful and helpful identification. Despite this, over time, it is really easy to over rely on these things.

To surrender identity feels like an identity crisis. It feels like something that requires more loss than gain. But in reality, only by surrendering identity is essence revealed. That is easier said than done though -

Kellen: Would you give up the pain and experience from what you went through and also give up what you learned?

Myka: I think the knee jerk reaction is no.

Because I feel part of my personality is finding lessons from the biggest of L’s. *Shitty experience happens* → ‘Well, at least I learned something from it.’ So the idea of giving up the shitty experience AND the lesson feels like it takes more than it gives. A lesson learned is something I’ll probably never do again (at least in the same way). But if I don’t get retain that lesson, even the release of the memory of the bad experience sets me up for future failure. Which, I’m not too sure I can get behind.

Kellen: What makes a lesson stick is not the intellectual understanding of what happened. It is the affect that is related to the experience that contributes to the profundity of learning. We learn through embodiment and lived experience. Surrendering parts of our identity is not meant to be pain free.

In fact, on the true search for essence, the path will also be pain full.