Who Am I? - The Frivolous Search For Identity When You Are One Of Eight Billion

'We are all God's creatures', said Father O'Rourke to the young man sitting before him in the sacristy of The Church of the Redeemer who had asked the unanswerable question, 'Who am I?'

The priest knew that the country was awash in 'identity' but the term had been limited to race, gender, and ethnicity, unhelpful terms given the enormity of creation and the true God-given individualization of every human being, and so he thought it best to offer spiritual advice. 

'God gave us each an individual soul', the priest went on. 'A unique, divinely inspired character knowable only to Him and to the bearer; a gift of promise and hope'; but the young man stared at him blankly.  He had heard all of this before, and was in no mood for spiritual placebos.  He was kept up at night by thoughts of his insignificance and worse by his ineptitude. Whether nature or nurture, he was an ineffectual person.  Without agency, some modicum of influential ability, he was wallpaper, elevator music, hotel room background.  

 

'We must make the best of what God has given us', said the priest; but the young man wanted no priestly nostrums, only something to chew on, something of substance that acknowledged his presence. 

Nietzsche said that the only validation of the individual in a meaningless world is the expression of pure will, but Adam Farley had always found himself prevaricating, weighing unpleasant options, giving himself time to think; and what he saw as his character - ironic humor, linguistic fluency, and some logic - was a dime a dozen.  Given the world's eight billion people, he must have a thousand clones, ten thousand. 

Konstantin Levin, Tolstoy's character in Anna Karenina, wondered at God's irony, having created Man as an intelligent, creative, insightful, talented being, allowed him a scant few decades to live, and then consigned him to eternity in the cold, hard grounds of the steppes - this negating any particular uniqueness to the species.  

 

'God doesn't play dice with the universe', said Einstein concluding that there must be some divine plan to Creation, but the young man saw none whatsoever, and so, a la Sartre felt an existential nausea. 

To make matters worse, women were attracted to him - not that he minded the attention, but concluded that venality was behind it all.  He represented something - his Mayflower ancestors, the wealth of his uber-capitalist father, his good health, intelligence, and reproductive promise - but that something was as fictive and illusory as anything.  Those women who claimed they wanted access to his inner rooms, his soul, were just more canny in their pursuit of a mate. 

 

So maybe he was missing the metaphysical point - since there was nothing beneath the Sturm und Drang of strutting, posturing, and seducing, maybe pimping oneself was the be-all and end-all. You are not what you are - because nothing is there - but what you seem.  And there, in this new age of social and fungibility, you could be anything you chose and trade it in for a new model every year. 

The fluid gender spectrum was a work of genius.  It was a marvelous, fantastical Mardi Gras of sexual fanfare and inexhaustible variety.  It mattered not that you were born either-or, male or female.  Sexuality was a choice like any other, and why remain straightjacketed in suit and tie when you could dress like a chorus girl and be tarty for a while? Or why not trade silk and organza frills for jackboots, jeans, and flannel?

Why not tout your blackness, your victimhood, your years of oppression at the hands of the white man when you still hadn't outgrown your tribalism? Better to be the subject of interest and compassion than a throwback.

As true as this fantastical cavalcade might be, and as sufficing as it was to those without much substance, it didn't solve the young man's conundrum. He neither had nor wanted pretention and was neither happy nor unhappy with the way he turned out. He wanted resolution, that was all, some clue as to who he was and why God had even bothered putting him in this insignificant, forgotten town of New Brighton. 

Evangelical Christians had the answer, although a facile one. If you took Jesus as your personal savior and formed an intimate relationship with him, you became divinely appointed, and what could be more significant than that?  It was one thing to talk of salvation, redemption, or even heaven - all conventional, collective imaginings - but to be friends and lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ, not that was something.  Once you found him, you became his emissary, his missionary and no secular purpose interfered or confused. 

 

But the young man had grown up Catholic, and no matter how ecumenical he had become over the years, the chalice, chasubles, host, hosannahs, and transubstantiation were still in his blood; so it was not surprising that he sought counsel if not wisdom from Father O'Rourke. Yet of course 'priest' was only the cloak that the man wore, a professional garb no less than 'judge' or 'advocate'.  In private he was a happy gay man living with his ordained lovers, playing out an identity which at least had inexorable, hardwired sexual desire behind it. 

Hindus had it right in one - the world is illusion, Maya, and one's only purpose is that realization and how it leads to spiritual evolution if not enlightenment.  Hindus uncomplainingly accept the strictures and limitations of caste because personal identity and freedom mean nothing.  It is enough to be a Kshatriya or Shudra.  The question of 'who am I' never occurs. 

Graham Greene explored the issue of identity in The Comedians - we are all actors playing a role - and Shakespeare said it best in the words of Macbeth, 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. 

So between God and Nietzsche, the young man had a bewildering array of explanations in front of him including 'fuck it' which day by day seemed the most sensible. 

Tolstoy in his spiritual memoir, A Confession, told of his lifelong search for God and after years of studying history, science, art, literature, and philosophy with no answers, he gave up and concluded that if hundreds of millions of people believed in Him, there must be something to it.  A backdoor  conversion, but a conversion nonetheless.  

After thanking the priest warmly and graciously, the young man left the sacristy and headed for home, convinced only that absent God in the machinery, the circus antics of identity were at least worth the price of admission.