I

I was around 7 years old when I first asked myself the question “Who am I”. The question haunted me and sent my mind into frenzy. If my mind was asking this question, I was not my mind and if I was not my mind then who was I? Who was my mind asking this question to? I would feel very uneasy every time this question occurred to me and I would completely loose track of things that were happening around me. This question haunted me for a few years, not constantly but every once in a while. Then gradually as grew into my teens the question went away.

I had identified my “self” with the image that I saw in the mirror. On some days the image in the mirror looked perfect on other days it would be full of blemishes. The morning ritual of looking in the mirror would set a tone for the rest of the day. As an artist would, I then started finishing that image. Various hair styles were tried out before settling on middle parting which highlighted my features the best. It was adorned by Classic fit blue jeans, a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves, black timberland shoes and Ray Ban sunglasses. I was the man in the mirror and I liked what I saw.

The 20’s raged through and as the 30’s began to roll in, the image in the mirror slowly started to fade. Confusion began to set in as I began wondering; “was I only this image in the mirror that could be so easily eroded by time?” By that time however my CV was already 4 pages long and it was not difficult to convince myself that I was more than just my image. I began to earnestly build my new self, working hard burning the night oil. I made many sacrifices, painfully borrowed time from my loved ones and used it to build my credentials. As my image in the mirror was starting to form a few wrinkles, I reminded myself that I will be judged not by my looks but through my accomplishments. The rat race was on and I wanted to be the fastest rat.

Now my CV is bigger but it can’t fill the void inside me. It seems like I have been running the wrong race. I can’t convince myself anymore that, I am just an image, a style, few awards, accolades, achievements or some combination of these physical expressions which will eventually dissolve into time. Over the past two years, that same old question “who am I?” has started to haunt me again. There is a renewed quest to find the “I”, this time though the journey seems to be heading inwards. As I embark on this journey I am sure that there will be many more questions to answer, obstacles to overcome and the mystic fog of Maya will keep leading me astray. Through this fog though, I can sometimes see a faint glimpses of my “self”, a self that is eternal and untouched by travails of time or space.

I am hoping to find my “self”, my real “I” some day. And I have a strong feeling that when I find my “self” it will be no different than your “self”.