As I am want to do, I have spent time thinking about personal identity. Not so much about the labels we place on ourselves as the stories we tell our selves. Specifically the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
We all say, I am like this or I believe that; or this is what happened to me and this is what it means, and this is not in itself wrong. We all need to have some anchor in this strange thing we call life. But what if we get so invested in these stories that we would essentially fight off any threat to them?
If our stories are perceived by us to be part of who we are, any challenge to them can feel like a challenge to our core being; our existence. And that can be dangerous.
If we become more interested in defending who we think we are, we can easily start defending ourselves against the truth. It too can become, to use a more commonly used phrase these days, an existential threat. And existential threats are met with seriousness. Defensiveness could even be taken to mean loyalty to and conviction for, our survival. I find this interesting and frightening.
It is why discernment means so much to me and why I have called my blog The Garden of Discernment. I want to cultivate discernment within me and others if possible. My focus is not about right and wrong as such. It’s about becoming willing to discover that my stories, tales and ideas just might be wrong.
I’m not suggesting the abandonment of our stories when they are challenged, just not allowing scepticism of other possibilities to become solidified laziness. I don’t want every challenge to automatically carry the same value ie not right because I am right. I want to be discerning enough to allow room for my stories about me to be examined.
This involves questioning :
What do I really know?
What meaning am I applying ?
What am I assuming?
And potentially, most importantly:
What evidence would change my mind?
These questions open the doors for interaction and relationships; ones in which defence is not as pressing as investigation. Ones that help me listen, explore, alter my mind.
In that space, I don’t have to defend myself quite so quickly.
Anyone interested in truth needs to sacrifice some level of self defence, specifically the defence of being automatically right. The need to be right about who we are can result in our stories becoming arbiters of our downfall rather than our continued existence. Our existential threats might come from our own internal narrators rather than external invaders.
