Who I Am Today Is Not Who I Was Yesterday
I’ll be someone else tomorrow.
Driving with friends to a fencing practice more than three hours away, as we talked about the usual people and things in our lives, certain thoughts arose. Things that used to bother me, upset me, or otherwise set me off just don’t anymore.
This is not a bad thing, because who I am today is not who I was yesterday. Giving this consideration and thinking about all the work I’ve done to become the person I am today, I’d like to take a moment to reflect and share some insights.
Setting my childhood aside, when I entered college, I had no direction. I even joked with my father, at orientation, that I would “major in procrastination and hesitation with a minor in bureaucratic red tape.” But it wasn’t long before I decided what to major in. I graduated 4 years later with a degree in theatre (a BA in drama focused on directing and sound design).
Like all college graduates, I had to decide to join the workforce, go on some kind of walkabout, or go to grad school. I joined the workforce. But again, like starting college, I had no direction.
For the next few years, I bounced between administrative and tech support jobs. Then, I got hit by a car crossing a street and spent a year recovering. It was this incident that began to shift my perspective on life, as I faced applying conscious reality creation to help me heal.
Broken but not defeated
Before I got hit by the car, my on-again/off-again girlfriend of that time had started exposing me to what she called the “hooky-spooky”. This involved working with energy healing, Reiki, and other new-agey ideas. It spoke to me in ways that no other form of spirituality spoke to me.
Hence, lying in a hospital with some very broken bones and nerve damage, I saw the choice in front of me. Curl up in a ball, lament my hurt, and literally or metaphorically wait for death. OR, let life live me, accept that I was broken with a prognosis for probably less-than-total recovery. OR, push back, put the energy into healing, and accept nothing less than that.
A year after the accident, I made a near-total recovery. Now, more than 25 years later, unless I show you the scars or tell you this story, you’d have no idea how broken I was.
This was an incredible example of who I am today is not who I was yesterday. Literally. The lessons of that experience were incredible and opened me to a lot of new potential and possibilities. But not for another 10 years.
Who I am today, I’ll be someone else tomorrow
Soon after my recovery, I returned to my previous lack of direction. For the next decade-plus, I again bounced from administrative to tech support to retail to marketing to administrative to marketing job. Between the ages of 27 and 40, I held 7 or 8 different jobs.
Despite the lessons about how you can choose to live life I learned during my recovery, I was still trying to fit my square-peg self into round holes. But I had a passion. I’d always had a passion. The written word. I’d been writing since I was 9 years old. And I even had a couple of finished novels.
One of the notions that I lost from my time recovering from my injuries was the importance of being in the now. This moment in time. The only time that is really, truly real. Hence, most of my focus was on becoming a new me tomorrow.
I was always looking for the next thing. This was applied to jobs/careers, relationships, places to live, events to attend, and on and on. Looking ahead to being someone else tomorrow, who I am today was ignored.
Then, I started to do more self-examination and inner work.
Choosing who I am, today
Somewhere along the way, I learned this quote that’s usually (mis)attributed to Albert Einstein, and realized it resonated all-too-well with me.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
I realized that my continued attempts to fit my square-peg self into round holes was robbing me of potential, possibility, and even contentment. So, I started to look more inside myself and began to apply more and more active conscious awareness to choices and decisions.
I stopped trying to date monogamously and began to embrace polyamory. Instead of just accepting that I had to work a standard 9-5 job, I sought work that resonated more with me. I began to write routinely.
More and more, I took actions to live in the moment, be present here and now, and choose who I am, today. Over the next 15 years, I found increasing contentment in people, places, and things. I discovered that I didn’t need to be in a constant state of alarm, concern, and motion.
These things would inform and develop this and other blogs, books, and my overall work and life philosophy. I share these ideas because all that I did to get here, you are also capable of.
Perfectly imperfect
Here’s the truth of who I am today. You can label me as a middle-aged, cis-gendered, white, American, culturally Jewish, mostly straight male. My vocation is writing sci-fi and fantasy novels full-time, with part-time work as a content creator and SEO specialist. I’m in a polyamorous marriage with an amazing woman (and I cannot fully express in words how much she means to me and how grateful I am for her in my life).
I’m not a master of anything, nor am I a guru. But I am always learning, practice daily rituals like meditation and journaling, and strive to be here now, live consciously aware, practice mindfulness, and make my own choices and decisions the best I can.
The result is that I’ve never been more content. The thing I most reflected on during that long drive to do one of the things that brings me the most joy (I love fencing) was how who I am today is not who I was yesterday, and will lead to me being someone else tomorrow. And that’s amazing.
I still struggle with clinical depression, uncertainty, and living in a world where terrified people keep choosing against their best interests (yes, I’m looking at you, Trump supporters). Through it all, I strive to be who I am today because that puts me in control of the only thing I can control. Me. My inner being. I’m perfectly imperfect and embrace the potential and possibility in that.
Be who you are
You have the same power to claim your inner empowerment. To begin, look within, learn your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. To do that, start by asking,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What are my intentions?
- Is my approach positive, negative, or neutral?
- What am I doing?
Each of these puts you in the here and now. That’s the key to informing the idea of who you are today. I was stunned when I realized how seldom I had asked these questions before.
From the answer you get, you can make choices and decisions, here and now. Don’t wait for tomorrow, nor look back to the past. Because only in the present do you have the control to determine who you are.
This takes time, effort, and energy. But I’ve found it utterly worthwhile, because rather than letting life live me or curling up in the fetal position in terror or fear, I’m choosing and deciding to live. That’s why and how I’m empowered, and you have the same ability to do this, too.
Who I am today is not who I was yesterday, and I’ll be someone else tomorrow. And I choose to celebrate the potential and possibility of this and all it means I can do, have, and be.
Thanks for letting me share these insights.
Do you see that you’re as empowered to decide who you are today as I am?
This is the six-hundred-ninety-seventh (697) 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 repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
Follow me here!
