Who Are You?
Dear readers, It’s not a question from the book of questions I shared in the post, Is This Just a Station on Your Soul’s Journey? However, I was asked this question during some leadership training through my work at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos conducted by Perennial. I had a week to think about my answer, but it’s funny how a question containing just three words, so simple on the face of it, leaves us trembling in an existential crisis and choking on our thoughts. The irony is that millions of us around the world paint our lives on social media to show off our lifestyle, what we are doing and our experiences to demonstrate who we are, but we very rarely ask ourselves these questions to dig out who we truly are and get to know ourselves better. As mentioned in an earlier post, I have been asking myself questions like these over the past few months, which has helped me understand where I stand on a whole number of topics, but this one stumped me: Who am I? Nicholas Rogers aka Ajmaqventurer, I am male, 44 years old, a Scorpio, from Birmingham, a journalist, a writer, an artist, I live in Tegucigalpa, divorced, I know my family and friends (although I try to trim the list down year after year), Dave Chappelle on a bad day cheers me up. This is who I am, kind of, but they are only surface-type elements that describe me, which doesn’t really show my essence; who I am on a deeper level. This is more than just a check-in or personal weather report; this is finding out who I am for myself. But then I realised, “Shite, do I really know myself? And is it true that maybe other people know me better than I know myself?” It is a wonderful shadow question, to build a steady foundation beneath our feet and understand ourselves, rather than numbly show off to the world how we want to be perceived. For myself, I feel I’ve ignored who I am for far too long. And maybe it is true: friends and family have a better grasp of who I am, as I do of others through examining and judging them. Don’t judge me for judging others. The Bible tells us not to do it, but we all fall for the trap. It’s a human flaw we all have. But saying that, by judging someone doesn’t necessarily mean we know who they are. It is more the behaviour or character traits we admire or dislike, which can tell us a lot, but not really windows to the soul. Maybe I’m scared to answer it on some level. Maybe I won’t like who I am or I will just find a void. Then I realised, “Nah, I think I’m quite a decent chap. There’s enough within me to explore.” Then I went on a wild bender of booze and psychedelic introspection: joke! No, I sat down with my journal and tried to answer, but weirdly, I hit a form of writer’s block, because this seemingly simple question was so full of baggage and weight. Yes, some readers might feel I am second-guessing myself, overthinking this riddle completely, and they know themselves oh so well. (Well, f–k you, then!). Pen in hand, journal before me, and nada. “Where do I start?” Nothing came. So I thought, being that this is leadership training, I can begin by asking this question from the perspective of myself as a leader. So I began: “I never planned on being a leader in my professional field. I enjoyed working in a team, but I also enjoyed working independently doing my own thing. Through teaching, I learned various leadership abilities, such as how to motivate and lead students to succeed and learn, seeing them improve, and I found I enjoyed it. I then became Communications Manager and then Director of Communications, where I have learned to lead at executive and middle management level, learning through courses, reading, advice from friends and colleagues, podcasts, and trial and error. I always do my best for NPH, the health of the organisation and my colleagues, making difficult decisions using the skills and experiences to direct, create opportunities, bring people together and overcome challenges. I have enjoyed it more than I expected, more so that I am an introvert, and I have been forced to come out of my comfort zone on many occasions. I have harnessed interpersonal skills and learned to relate and find triggers to motivate people to work to one common goal. This is through trial and error, as mentioned before. I enjoy it, but it is tiring. People aren’t robots. You can’t rewire them or edit them using coding. You have to guide and support, but also know when to give them space and not micromanage, and also look after my own mental health to engage in activities outside the working environment, such as writing on my blog, Ajmaqventurer.” This was great. Therapeutic. But still, I was only skimming the edges without delving into who I am. I’m a leader at NPH. Does this define me? What about the rest of me? I’m more than my job. As part of the training, I was paired in a virtual breakout room with a good friend and colleague of mine, Daniel Zapata, who works for NPH Mexico. I started by mumbling something about how difficult it was to answer this question, and repeated a little of what I said above as a leader. Daniel then came out with something that, I will paraphrase below, was reminiscent of The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony, but enveloped in something I found profound: “I am mortal. I live and die. In between, we have to take advantage of the moments of happiness we have. It’s impossible to be happy all the time. We know that. We make connections. It is what life is about: making connections. With friends and family, with our
Is This Just a Station on Your Soul’s Journey?
Dear readers, For the past 7 or 8 months, as a way of getting to learn myself a little more, I’ve been answering introspective questions, using the book Question Yourself: 365 Questions to Explore Your Inner Self & Reveal Your Inner Nature by Dave Edelstein and I.C. Robledo. The book was chosen pretty much at random. You can find quite a few on any online bookstore or platform. I would answer two or three a day in a personal journal, then sometimes go a week or even a month without a word. The questions have ignited my unknown quest to understand where I stood on a whole number of emotional and spiritual subjects, which before I was just ambivalent or somewhat apathetic about. As you can imagine, asking such questions is a wonderful cathartic and enriching experience, almost a cleansing or purging toxins with a firm scrubbing of the soul and shedding light on old habits and ways of thinking that no longer serve me. To put it another way, a search for my own truths and values, without contamination of thought or opinion of another maje*…I mean, person, in a peaceful solitude and armed with a nice fruity cup of tea. In some ways, it has been part of a healing process, for reasons you can find in my post The Game of Grief. Saying that, sometimes I enjoyed the contamination of thought from others and asking majes…I mean, friends, aleros**, questions, particularly when they were drunk, dazed and confused, just to see what nonsense they’d come up with. Then, I would horrendously bully and ridicule them and their deepest, precious thoughts and make them believe their ideas were dogshit, but then still steal their genius pearls of amazement and redesign it as my own wisdom, intelligence and emotional maturity. Plagiarism, theft of thought and toxic manipulation at its very best [cue sarcastic bow]. I am of course joking. My friends barely have a brain cell between them. Yes, now I really am joking. It was good fun winding them up while they bumbled through their answers in intoxicated states. But more so, it was fascinating to hear reflections and the life stories that helped them come to such conclusions. I will share some of the questions and answers now and then. Feel free to write your own answers in the comments below. I invite them. Or, write them in your personal journal; I hope you receive the same mental benefits as myself. Is This Just a Station on Your Soul’s Journey? A nice facile question to begin with, then: the soul, or more so, “the soul’s journey”. I found it easy to answer when I did so in my journal. Now I think of it on a deeper level, the question raises so many more questions in my beliefs, and our belief systems as a society, loaded with concepts of faith and/or philosophy, that it makes it a little difficult knowing where to start. I am not particularly religious, nor do I pretend to be a philosopher, but I guess this question crosses all our minds at some stage (or station) of our lives (or soul’s journey), and while we all want to believe or come to a conclusion of what happens after we die, the truth is we never really know. Therefore, if this were a school essay, I would probably receive an F, “for sitting on a metaphysical fence”. Nonetheless, let me try. There are a couple of ways to interpret this question. The way we answer it hinges on what is meant by the “soul’s journey”, and whether it transcends to different lifetimes as many faiths believe, or does the journey end when the heart stops beating and we become a lush banquet for worms. A slightly morbid thing to say, I know, but I am a fan of The Walking Dead, so please accustom yourself with my ghast. It’s almost appropriate to mention The Walking Dead actually, as one of my favourite characters, Negan, a villainous yet humorous psychopath, walks around with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire which he named after his dead wife who he believes (or just says) is reincarnated into the bat. This very bat he uses for ending the lives of the dead and the living by hitting them rather hard over the head. Sorry for the spoiler. I will answer the question by first exploring whether the “soul journey” extends other to lifetimes, with “station” referring to this current lifetime. I also look at the alternative that the soul ends when this lifetime finishes and “station” refers to the here and now, and whether there are any benefits to this way of thinking. The Soul Journey So how can we define the Soul’s Journey? Something of a spiritual progression or evolution that a soul undergoes throughout its existence, which includes experiences, growth, learning, and ultimately, transcendence or reunification with a higher power or cosmic consciousness. When one thinks of “higher powers”, we can’t help but connect it to religion, faith and spirits. As mentioned above, there are many religious beliefs on the soul and what happens to the spirit once our physical body dies. In the Christian faith, there concept of the afterlife in Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. It all hinges on the judgement of an omnipresent being named God who analyses the sins we’ve committed during this lifetime. For more information, read the Bible. Otherwise, I recommend The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri; a nice bedtime read. As part of Mexican and Latin American culture Mexico is Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, when families craft ofrendas, marigolds, photographs, and beloved foods and beverages of their loved ones who have crossed over to the other side. The ofrendas are thought to beckon the souls back, as they listen to prayers, and savour the scents of their favourite dishes. For more information, go to Mexico. Otherwise, watch Coco. Islam is similar the Christian