Who are you?

You may choose to describe yourself with adjectives or analogies. Are you sure you have described yourself right? Sometimes we may feel a sense of hesitation about our choice of words or blame our inability to articulate... but is that who we are? Is that who we were? Is that who we want to be?

Who you are, can only be aptly answered if you understand that the person 'you' is a function of time. Who you are today - was not who you were yesterday - will not be who you are tomorrow. There are traits of your pasts that you still possess, some you have let go off and some you have acquired recently. And this is an ongoing cycle for every human being. If we are able to understand the fact that who you are today may or may not be who you are tomorrow, half the journey is covered.

What you believe in today, you may not believe in tomorrow. The great Bertrand Russell once said:

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Its quite astonishing what that many of us may be willing to agree with the above statement, but very few of us have the courage to exhibit this behaviour. Admitting that you are wrong seems like a brave task and we aspire for bravery, however nobody teaches you how to be brave. You have to crawl and fall and learn. 

Some minds tuned to one-way thinking may also call Russell a fraud, since 'he is not owning up to his actions in the future; he is not trust-worthy'. But if we look closely, all he has said is that as per a present day (today), I may have a certain belief. Will I die for it? No, why should I? I might realise that I am wrong tomorrow. Just because we voice out our beliefs today to the world, we feel a sense of hesitation to change our stance on this belief tomorrow. Consistency is perceived as a good thing in the society, and being inconsistent with something so intrinsic as your beliefs may shake the overall perception of who you are.

Does that really matter? Don't we all change over a period of time? Why are we so worried about how inconsistent our behaviour will be in the future? Or rather, how this inconsistency will be perceived.

If you want to stay-put, maintain status quo, by all means continue to do what you are doing and enjoy who you are. If you want to be somewhere else, and expect the environment around you to magically revolve, you may just end up complaining about where you are, and where you will never be. "Seat warming" may very well end up as the biggest strength on your resume.