WHO AM I and WHO ARE YOU?

I was thinking this morning as I was walking across campus about the many roles we play during our lives. One day we are children, the next perhaps a student, a dancer or a singer, or an athlete. We are always a daughter or son,a sister or brother, perhaps a mother,grandmother, father, aunt, uncle,cousin,friend or colleague. Maybe we become a writer, a professor, a lawyer, a teacher, or philosopher. Our lives are filled with changing roles and identifies, and while some of them are fixed in place for a lifetime or maybe for a long time, many roles are ephemeral. They change as we make changes in our lives, change jobs, move, grow up or grow old.

I started to think about all of this because I have had many different roles and responsibilities during my life time and today I am a student and as one professor suggested, a scholar. Perhaps I am not a scholar yet, not as I think of a scholar, but this so struck me. Four short months ago I was a fundraiser and program administrator and before that there were many other titles. I think the point I am trying to make is that we should never take on these titles as our true identity. They are not who we are. If we take on our titles as our identifies, we can suffer an identity crises when we are no longer in that role, and probably most important, we limit the endless possibilities of being more than we are in that particular moment. I think it is so important to be fully engaged in the moment, giving it our full attention and energy to what we are doing. At the same time it is equally important to be open to the possibilities that arise in the moment.

Today I realized that I am not just in this moment a singer or a student, but that perhaps I am a scholar. I am intrigued by that title, because it is not one I had thought for myself. But that is my goal, not just to earn a masters degree, but to be worthy of being called a scholar, a scholar of ritual chant. I am only in week two of my course work. Who am I today? Many things including a scholar-in-the-making.