Soul searching… I think I have no need for soul searching. I sort of stopped a long time ago, but it is just recently did I realize I knew who I was. It was not something I dwelt on. I just suddenly thought, “I know myself.”

This thought just popped in my head during that trip my mom and I went on Saturday (August 18) afternoon. I told my mother that revelation. She asked me who I was then. The problem was I could not really explain it. All I could say was “I’m me.” It reminded me when I told Shred the phrase “Kyle is Kyle.” I think that is when I really began to have a sense of self.

Anyway, what does that mean then? It means there is actual uniqueness in the world. In the end, to outward views, you can be everything, thus nothing. How is that? Opinions cancel each other out. To one person I might be boring. To another I am interesting. Those cancel out. In the end, you can be everything and thus nothing. This leads to why I think I found myself quicker than most people.

I recall my mother telling me her sense of self had depended on her profession. Not those exact words, but that was what I got from it. Before we had moved to the town I lived in before moving here, she had a name for herself.

We had lived in Alaska. She was a teacher there, well known and admired. She had friends there, a life. When we moved, she went into a slump and was depressed for a year. She had to wait for when a job opportunity would show up. She knew no one. She lost her sense of identity.

When she first told me that story I looked at her and said that I did not understand why people placed so much of their identity on their professions. She asked me what I thought defined a person. I told her the decisions I make and the company I keep. I don’t remember her response to that.

Well, the case of that trip down memory lane is… people can spend their whole lives looking for themselves out in the world. That makes little sense to me. You are within yourself. You are not in another person nor are you on the other side of the world where people seem to be from a different planet.

A person’s identity is simply him or herself. Some people think they find themselves by meeting other people and seeing new places. It expands one’s self, but it does not make a person find him or herself, I think. Doing those things simply absorb other people. It absorbs experiences. It absorbs some wisdom is used correctly… but it still does not mean the person fund true identity. It merely shows the person who he or she identifies with.

Take away everything – the people, the places, the experiences. Take away the aliases and the different personas. Then simply look inside. All there is is you and all those things you took away merely helped shape or express you… but none of those things are really your self. They are just facets. Put together they help define you… but they are not your soul.

What your self is… is a soul that embellishes itself in experiences that are brought together. Some are shared or similar to others… but how you underwent them and the combination of other experiences that are similar to a different person’s is what makes a person unique. A life that is actually like a structure of DNA… you can have many experiences similar to others… but none of them will be the exact same.

I am me… and I did not need to look for myself out in the world, because I am simply within myself.