Nobody Is Only One Thing
Everyone is many things.
How do you identify yourself? This in and of itself is a multi-layered notion.
For example, I identify myself by my name, age, ethnic heritage, height, weight, nation, gender, vocation, hair color, eye color, and that’s just a start. Dig deeper and you’ll find more identifiers you can use.
You likely identify yourself in similar, multiple ways. There are many reasons for this. It can depend on who you are sharing your identity with, why you’re sharing, when you’re sharing, and more.
Some of your identifiers are tangible and material but most are intangible and immaterial. There are some which are temporary or specific to a time and place, a few are even semi-permanent (semi-permanent because change is the only constant in the universe). Hence, most are changeable.
Yet people will hold onto identifiers like life rafts in a stormy sea. They will fight and die, sometimes literally, to maintain an intangible identity.
Nationalism is a prime example of that. You identify so strongly with your nation that you will take up arms to protect its sovereignty. This is neither good nor bad in and of itself. It can become problematic when it forces stagnation over progress and blinds you to other relevant truths. That’s how you get racists, white supremacists, and Trump cultists.
This is why it’s important to recognize that nobody, yourself included, is only one thing.
You are full of multitudes
How many thoughts did you have yesterday? Go ahead and count, I’ll wait. That, however, will take practically forever, as most people have anywhere from 6000 to 70,000 thoughts per day. At either end of the spectrum that’s a lot of thoughts happening.
Fortunately and unfortunately, the majority of these are tied to automation. Habit. That allows you to do necessary things like pour and drink a glass of water, soap yourself in the shower, apply toothpaste to the brush then brush your teeth, and so on. This is fortunate because if you had to give these things constant, frequent attention, how would you be able to think of anything abstract, creative, inventive, or new?
This is also unfortunate because this is how you hold and maintain negative thoughts about yourself on many levels, other people, and life. Unchecked, you can find yourself unhappy, depressed, and disconnected before you know it.
Part of why you create identifiers is to help make sense of it all. Identity connects names to faces, people to events, and great and small experiences. This is utterly harmless in that way.
Where it all goes wrong is when one identity dominates. This can be both personal and impersonal. Hence, if you think of yourself as a fat person, and believe all anyone sees is a fat person, this can do a number on your psyche. That can lead to eating disorders, depression, and other problems in your life.
However, nobody is only one thing. That applies to you, too.
Nobody is only one thing
As I noted at the start of this article, I can identify myself by my name, age, ethnic heritage, height, weight, nation, gender, vocation, etcetera. None of these, however, stand-alone. They can tie into one another but also associate with more abstract ideas.
For example, my gender. I identify as male. This is both because I was born with a penis and because that’s how I self-identify. To me, that’s all there is to it.
You, however, might question if my male identity causes me to oversexualize women, act in misogynistic ways, support male dominance over females, and all sorts of other, unsavory ideas tied to the male gender (and others who identify themselves with it). One simple identifier can be associated with a myriad of other abstract ideas.
I’m not just male. What’s more, many of the stereotypes of cis-gendered males are not true for me. I could go into this in some depth but that would be a lengthy, useless digression. The point is that I am not only one thing.
Male, but a strong proponent of gender equality. Straight, but a major supporter of LGBTQA+ rights. That’s just a very small snapshot to show how I am not only one thing.
You know yourself. Thus, you know that you are not only one thing. Recognizing and acknowledging this can go a long way toward embracing the inevitability of change and ideas outside of your own.
Why does this matter? Because some identifiers we hold for others are ugly, and that’s also true of some identifiers we hold for ourselves.
How does being identified as only one thing feel?
Maybe you have an identifier you’re especially proud of. For me, that would be my vocation – writer. You’re reading the proof of that in these words, and I can point to all the books I’ve published over the last few years. That’s one thing, one identifier, I am happy to wear.
You might, however, be identified as something you’re ashamed of. Or disappointed by. In this instance being viewed as only one thing doesn’t feel good. That can lead you to all sorts of bad places and challenges for your health, wellness, and wellbeing.
Sometimes that identifier is negative (racist, sexist, and so on). Other times, it’s neutral but tends to come with negative connotations (fat, unfashionable, and so on). Unaddressed, that one thing can dominate and cause you distress.
Many of the ways you identify people or get identified cause conflict. It might be internal, external, or both. Yet, by and large, being viewed as only one thing is more often a negative than a positive.
You can do nothing about this for anyone else. I can’t make you look at me and not see that I’m heavyset. I can, however, see myself as a work in progress – and extend the same courtesy to you and any identifiers I put on you along the way.
When you recognize and acknowledge that nobody is only one thing – and that applies to you, too – you can more readily understand opposing points of view. That opens you to greater mindfulness and self-awareness, which helps you work on your own identifiers and make desired changes.
Not only is everyone many things, but everyone can be many things.
What can you do with the knowledge that nobody is only one thing?
This is the six-hundred-seventy-first (671) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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