Foundation for new beginnings

The story is told of 28-year-old Michelle standing along the El in Chicago’s rapid transit system one winter evening, depressed and despondent, contemplating on jumping into the path of the next express train. Michelle had lived her life with one overarching image: “I am an illegitimate child.” This served as an all-purpose explanation to what she was resigned to, a series of tragedies constituting her life.

While contemplating on ending more than a quarter century of existence, Michelle saw her image reflected by the glass on one of those ubiquitous ads along the walls of train stations. It suddenly and overwhelmingly struck her that she was no longer a “child” but a full-grown woman. Staring at her reflection, it dawned on her that “illegitimate” was not an attribute of her character but an appellation branded on her by a society that took exception to her parent’s behavior. Canceling “an illegitimate child” out of her self-story, she was left with nothing but the sheer awe and mystery of being “I am.”

Motivational speakers often circulate this story. Some are straightforward in the telling, others drippy in sentimental piety. But all are out to belabor the point that a lot of our maladies stem from dysfunctional self-stories often accepted without question from the assessments and judgments of other people. The unexamined life is not worth living, the ancients admonished. Know thyself is the credo of liberal learning. From Socrates to Dewey, self-knowledge has been acknowledged the purpose of real education.

In this time of making new resolutions, redefining one’s goals and objectives, a prior focus for reflection, meditation and contemplation might be the fundamental image of one’s identity. Who do you say you are? This is a question way beyond guarding one’s reputation, which is nothing but a juvenile preoccupation with what others think of you.

This is confronting the image of one‚s self that one sees in the mirror first thing in the morning. What do you say of that image?

Before our age declared its disdain for metaphysics, and understandably so, given the seemingly obscurantic and esoteric output coming from this arcane discipline, we are nevertheless confronted again and again with the reality that our sense of identity, who we are, undergirds and determines our vocation, what we say we do.

Isaac Magofna, former executive director of the NMI Council for the Humanities, in explaining the Council’s Chautaugua’s program of impersonating a historical character before an audience, said that the first step is a deconstruction of the character image before one can assume a new and presumably, a more authentic one. Intentionally creating one’s self-image entails constant recreation. One dares to be born again, and again.

Followers of Siddhartha Gautama articulated their master‚s born-again story as one resulting in the “I am Nothing,” the great extinguisher of illusions. Gandhi would later translate this into his social action credo: “I am a doormat of society,” and with such humility, managed to single-handedly humble the mighty British Empire. Followers of Joshua Ibn Nazareth crowned their peripatetic Galilean prophet with the Grecian seal and Roman pantocratic glow of the “alpha and the omega.” Iesu became Christo Rei. The imperial “I am Everything,” the great affirmation, would guide many a missionary endeavor, for good and for ill, from Constantine‚s Holy Roman Empire to GW Bush’s New Global Order, in the name of this Christian self-understanding.

Gautama would see that in the cosmic scheme of things, my assumed significance is but a mere crest of a tsunami away, rendering a lot of my daily anxieties into nothing but a heap of hubris. One is called to take finitude seriously. Life is about obedience to one’s limits. On the other hand, as Iesu‚s brother, a child of God, one dares not allow human injustices to prevail, for every creature within its own being, carries its awesome infinite value. Freedom is my responsibility. My possibility is one I only dare decide.

The Tetragrammaton YHWH from the Fertile Crescent, pronounced Yahweh in contemporary Biblical studies, translates into English as simply “I am that I am.” Used as a proper known, it signifies the highest designation one can give in English, the word “God.” Thus, to venture into the realm of the “I am” is to enter the domain of the “holy,” the sanctified time and sacred space, the province of our ultimate concern.

While we do not wish to make a heady stuff out of staring at oneself on the mirror while brushing one’s teeth in the morning, we do suggest that each one do intuitively and instinctively create a self-image. The Greeks called this impersonation the creation of a mask that embodies one’s “I am,” our modern day sense of personality. It makes a difference what a Judge sees of himself in the morning on how he adjudicates cases at the Courthouse sala, or a teacher’s self-story in one’s role modeling before students, or a Joeten salesperson’s self-image as one proffers island hospitality to visiting guests, or a psychiatrist’s gestalt as she assesses someone else’s sanity.

Before consumers deal with the utilization of natural, human and technological resources, the production of the same to meet human needs and wants, and the distribution systems of the value-added gains, hangs the sustaining mask of the “I am.” Before the citizen decides on maintaining law and order, ensuring that the benefits of health, education and welfare accrues to all, and providing a process of adjudication when conflicting values and interests collide, hovers the political guise of the “I am.” Before the humanist catalogues the wisdom of the past, analyzes the life-styles of the present and inventories the icons that are the inventions of the human journey, researches possibilities of alternative futures, floats the cultural picture of the “I am.”

To say that the “I am” prefixes, affixes and suffixes our humanity is not to simply make an idle abstract statement while nursing a frozen margarita along Beach Road on Oleai hoping to catch sight of the green flash on the western horizon. It is about choosing to begin life again when each day, as a New Year often comes to remind us, can be lived as if it was the first day and only day of one‚s life.

Michelle had to deal with deconstructing the entrenched “an illegitimate child” image. It was not easy. Nor was it easy to construct a functional one. Hers came to this: “I am a unique, unrepeatable gift of life into human history. There has never been one like me before, and there will never be another one like me ever again.” Her mantra of I-am-ness, a selfhood defined from the bowels of her guts, guides the expenditure of her life.

From who you (be) are will flow what you do. So, who do you say you are?

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Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School and writes a regular column for the Saipan Tribune.