Who I am

Who am I?

I remember a time in my life, oh, and what a happy time that has been, when I never wondered who I was.  I was just happy to be. The simple joy of being or the simple sadness of being, when circumstances where of such nature that sadness was there for some time, and a rather small time that was, these were the governing feelings.
But then I learnt to speak, after having learnt to listen and understand whatever it was that had been spoken.
And since I did learn to speak I was taught to answer questions.
“Politely, if you please!” said mum. “You must answer politely, always. And never lie, my love. The best thing in life is to tell the truth!” she added.
“I am sorry Madame, but I don’t want to play with Alina!”
“Why not, dearie? Don’t you like her?”
“No, she is stupid and selfish!”
And then mum got cross with me: how could I have said such a thing about Alina? And of all people, I had to say it to her mother?!
But coming back to people’s questions addressed to me. Since I learnt to speak everybody had a question for me. And it was usually the very same question:
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Now this brought about a series of blurry concepts and questions in return, in my head.
The answer to the question needed some analyzing. In the first place, what on earth did they mean by “when you grow up”?
Things seemed to me to be just fine the way they were, so why should we have them changed and me grow up?
Secondly - to be…. to be what? Looking about me I tried to understand what the ones that were already grown up were. Mum and dad. Well, mum was my mother. Dad was my father. Then it was aunty and uncle. Aunty was my mother’s sister and the mother of my cousin.  And uncle was my aunt’s husband and the father of my cousin (the same cousin, I’ll have you know).
Grandma and grandpa. Grandma was the mother of mum, and grandpa was the father of mum.
Of course there was also Madame, who was pesky Alina’s mother and felt hurt I told her the truth! Some people just can’t handle the best things in life!
A small assessment of the situation showed me there was not much that I could become but the mother of somebody (being the father of somebody seemed out of the question, for reasons that were not yet very clear to me).
Dreaded thing if I would have to end up the mother of an unbearable brat like Alina, though.
Somehow the obvious lack of a wider range of options seemed discouraging. There had to be a solution to the problem. Not that being a mother seemed an unworthy position. But I would have preferred to be able to ponder on the subject, make my choice from varied alternatives and be proud of the entire process.
Considering and reconsidering the data available it struck me that I did have an extra option. Namely, I could just continue to be who I was. And of course, improve my being whoever I was.
And then the big blow came: “Who am I?”
It came to my understanding that I had no idea who I was.
With all sincerity, and I do hope you are among those who can handle the best things in life, I have been brooding and brooding ever since on this question and to no good end, I am afraid.
Sometimes I really believe I have found the answer, and then some little thing happens and all my hope of ever discovering who I am vanishes into thin air.
At times I have even felt silly due to the fact that I was bothered at all by this question.
But then I found out of an old saying, seemingly written on top of the entrance to an old temple, which said:
“Know thyself – and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe.”
Isn’t it a fine piece of irony that nobody seems to know with certainty what genial mind said this?