I wrote the following poem in October 2014.  I was in a meeting when the subject of identity came up and as I listened the first few lines came to me.  The rest followed nearly effortlessly and the end just sort of fell in my lap.  My post yesterday was about the many things we get so focused on, but that leave us feeling unfulfilled and empty.  When we have our fill of disappointment some of us are given a glimpse of that which truly identifies us, truly gives our lives meaning and substance:  Love.  This poem says about the same thing, just in a different way.  

"Who Are You?"

Who are you deep down

in the cellar of your soul?


Are you authentic


Or playing a role?

Are you your needs

Your hungers and your passions

Or are you your dreams

Or the result of your actions?

Is there a real self

Gestating within

Waiting to be born

Out of what you have been?

Are you reaching your potential

Or only an idling engine?

Is your will free

Or ruled by religion?

Are you your feelings

Your hormones' influence

Or are you your relations

Pursuing congruence?

Are you your illness

Or defined by psychosis

Contained in the specifics

Of a doctor's diagnosis

Are you your disappointments 

that have dragged you down

or are you your successes

That you wear like a crown?

Are you your weight

Or the shape or your face

Cultures’ defined beauty

The cage with no space?

Do you run from yourself

With syringe, drag or snort

Do you hide from the mirror

Pickled in vodka and port?

Are you the superstar

Your name in the news

Talents on field or film

Any exploit you choose

Have you become your job

The labor or work

A nameless maker of stuff

for paycheck and perk?

Are you your money

The net-worth of accounts

Buying distractions until

The checks start to bounce

"You are what you eat

The nutritionists' claim

"You're the sum of your thoughts"

Is the philosophers' frame

"Galactic debris"

Astronomers say that we are

"We're the living and conscious

Dust of a star"

A web of natural selection

Some say we come from

The eons of evolution

Weeding out the weak and the dumb.

Do appetites and genetics

Nature and nurture

Environment and experience

Determine your future?

Can science examine

the heart and really know it?

Probe mysteries, parse soul

Or should we ask the poet?

Perhaps you're a canvas

On easel and waiting

For your colors and image

And the artist who's painting

Is there a purpose

In the days that you live

In the who that you are

In the kindness you give?

Have you forgotten your name

Beneath all of this dust

The name you've been given

By the One you should trust?

Who you become

Is a story being told

By the Author of days

Penned in sunlight and gold

Circumstances are naught

To the One with the pen

Nothing prevails

Not darkness nor sin

In your hands find the sword

As in your heart courage is written

By facing hidden fears

The dragons are smitten

Not determined by cells

Or the things that you learn

Not the things that you do

Or the things that you earn

The who that you are

is not the shouted at and shoved.

Nay, the real who that you are

Is the Author’s beloved.

© Stephen Carl