How Do You Define You?
Writer’s Note: When you head down to the water’s edge, laptop firmly clutched under your arm, to commune with your muse, to write something that touches others’ souls, answers the questions they’re wrangling, or simply moves someone’s needle toward self-love and acceptance…(Insert sound of screeching brakes) and you realize that your computer’s battery is dead. So what do you do? You use your phone and record a few ideas for later! Here’s the result:
I recently had my first professional photo shoot in, well, I don’t even know how many years. Probably 15. I have to be honest. I speak confidently in front of hundreds of people, but I was terrified to stand in front of a camera, a skilled photographer on the other side of it snapping pictures, trying to capture my essence, and striving to portray something in one still-photo that’s really 50-something years of experience.
As I consider the relationship between who I am and what a picture of me represents, I am struck by the paradox of photography, and how a snapshot taken in an instant has the ability to last forever. I realize in today’s world, where social media plays such a huge and central part in our lives, we allow one photograph to define ourselves. I wonder…How can one click of a shutter possibly render the depth of one’s heart, the expanse of one’s experience, and the intention of one’s soul? Have you ever looked at a photo someone else tagged of you on Facebook or Insta and cringed because you didn’t like the way you looked, hated your expression, or needed both hands to count your chins? Have you ever untagged yourself because of how your body looked or your hair came out that day? What’s worse, have you ever let that single pic pull the rug out from under your sum-total self-image?
Buying into the misguided notion that one fleeting photo captures the whole and truest you is analogous to believing that one event in your life defines you. Let’s examine all the singular elements of who you are that do not, in and of themselves, identify you. Your age doesn’t define you. It is simply an arbitrary measure of where you are on your unique journey. What others say about you doesn’t characterize you. It might provide feedback or insight, but it likely says more about the person saying it than you. Your ethnicity, your background, your struggles, your decisions…while they are building blocks to your disposition or your nature, none of these things make your entire identity. Your failures don’t define you, and like it or not, neither do your successes. Of course, these all play a part in making you who you are, building your resilience, and forming your world view. But just as the temper tantrum you threw at two years old, the grand slam you hit in 7th grade, or your college GPA do not comprise your entire identity, neither do your missteps yesterday or your victories today.
The key to forging the best you is learning to view life as a process, focusing less on individual snapshots and more on the experiences, relationships, and character that transported you to that moment and greeted you on the other side of it. So, the next time an incident in your life knocks you off balance, repeat the phrase “this does not define me,” and you’ll find it won’t, unless you let it. By practicing the mantra, you’ll learn to compile singular snapshots of your life into a more complete motion picture. Just as you wouldn’t enjoy the essence of a movie or understand its plot by viewing a series of stills, you’ll diminish the quality of your life experience by investing too much value in singular events. The darkest occasions in your life’s film find their quiet place set to a soft, melancholy soundtrack, but they soon make way for scenes of joy, love, and intrigue to playout, too. What defines you are not the dramatic pieces, but who you are in the interlude, how you navigate the transitions, and how you make the most of the space between the big scenes.
©Susan M Vitale, 2019