You
tell the world who you are
in a million different ways.
Some are subtle, some are not.
But it doesn't seem to matter:
this world has already got you pegged.
When you were born they put you in a little box,
and slapped a label on it.
So they could keep things organized,
and not have to think about what’s inside.
Over time you learn to make yourself comfortable
packaging your identity in different combinations
until you feel like you belong,
and can wear your labels proudly.
But there’s a part of you that never really found a home
rattling around in categories that couldn’t do you justice.
You look around at other people,
trying to judge how loosely they fit in their own lives
sensing a knot of confusion hidden beneath a name tag.
And you realize we’re still only strangers,
who assume we already know what the other is going to say,
as if the only thing left to talk about is
who belongs in what category
and which labels are offensive.
You have to wonder if these boxes are falling apart.
If we should be writing our identities by hand,
speaking only for ourselves, in our own words,
taking our chances out in the open
and meet each other as we are,
asking: “What is it like being you?”
—and be brave enough to admit
that we don’t already know the answer.
Maybe it’ll mean that we’ve finally arrived,
just “unpacking the boxes”
making ourselves at home.
And maybe we’ll look back and wonder
how we managed to live in the same house for so long,
and never stop to introduce ourselves.
TJ
Your life is a story. The days flip past, too quickly to absorb, a mess
of seemingly random events. So you look back and highlight certain
moments as important, as turning points in the main plot. You trace each
thread back to its origin, finding omens and ironies scattered along
the way, until it all feels inevitable, and your life makes sense. You
know how this story is going to end, but you’re still eager to skip
ahead, dying to know what happens next.
But there are times when
you look up and realize that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to
you anymore. You thought you were following the arc of the story, but
you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand.
Either everything seems important or nothing does. It’s a tangled mess
of moments that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre, that
keeping changing depending on what you choose to highlight.
What
kind of story is this? Just another coming-of-age tale, the same one
your parents told, with the names switched around? Is your everyday life
part of the origin story of something truly epic? Are you unwittingly
getting by on other people’s charity, mistaking your own luck for your
own success? Are you a character in a romance, a tragedy, a travelogue,
or just another cautionary tale?
As you thumb through the years,
you may never know where this all is going. The only thing you know is
that there’s more to the story. That soon enough you’ll flip back to
this day looking for clues of what was to come, rereading all the
chapters you skimmed through to get to the good parts—only to learn that
all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.
TJ
