Who am I?

I don't know who I am.


Sinking into meditation I often encounter sadness, resistance and not knowing. Walking through a field I often encounter a deep joy when seeing wind move through grasses and in a tree filled with yellow flowers, highlighted against the colour of a thunderstorm.


Resting in meditation I sometimes feel myself open towards myself, towards the world, towards a gentle acceptance of the unknown. Or I get interrupted by a phone call from an unknown number and find myself closing off from myself. I feel that I cannot relax, cannot unfurl, until I know that which I am not sure of.


I know who I hope to be. I know who I do not want to be. Yet, I suspect that I exist neither between these two states or as a result of them.


I exist in each moment as a result of conditioning, thoughts, actions, expectations, observations, hormones, feelings, wants, not wants, acceptance and love. Yet there is also the me that surrounds all these things, watching. What about the me who experiences beauty from a place that is open and free? The me who allows myself to rest in the awareness that each experience is but a small part of my all? The me that pushes towards a yearning which I do not understand? The me that builds barriers to protect me from a threat that I cannot name?


Every day I am blind. I don't know where life starts and I begin, I don't know where I come from or where I am going. Everyday I see the beauty which surrounds me, new aspects of myself and those I love. I feel this love in my heart. It feels real. I feel a fear of loosing it all, of loosing myself, in my solar plexus. It feels real.


I cannot say who I am. Yet, I also know that I am a woman of thirty seven who wears jeans most every day. Who has gone back to University, who walks her dogs through a field filled with pale green grasses, who loves to dance, who fights with her partner, who discovers how to love her partner more, who laughs with her partner while fooling around. A woman who is restarting her yoga practice, who wants to drive to her Nia class and also wants to stay curled up with a book while it rains outside. A woman who reads Georgette Heyer when she also wants to read about children's participation in environmental projects, wild witching, literature and the environment, deep democracy, links between democracy and the environment, a mink who escapes from captivity and the last bit of a Erica Young novel.


A woman who needs a job, who worries where the money will come from, who mourns the disappearance of species and quiet fields and who fears calls from unknown numbers that leave no messages. A woman whose car takes too long to start and whose office is filled with the peace of things her heart can rest on. A woman who took too much drugs in her youth, who hurt those closest to her and who finds it difficult to trust. A woman whose live is changed by reading about a death and who suddenly sees the spaciousness of being present to each moment. A woman who strives for perfection, a woman who is able to see the joy in surrendering to chaos.


A woman who is trying to arrange a year and a future filled with things that will grow her closer to the person she wants to be. A person who she does not know and cannot define. A person that might never be defined because she is fluidly moving through and into her past, present and future. And maybe this is the way I want it.