I want to give you a gift. An opportunity to take a few minutes to think about the beliefs and characteristics you’ve inherited, implying without autonomy at the time you adopted them. I know that you hate that statement a little already, because we like to believe we are in complete control of ourselves. It’s why people hate marketing. We love to buy, but hate to think someone is influencing our decisions. Even if its towards the decision of buying a thing we will love. Chances are, some of those things you inherited were later put under the microscope and were allowed to continue existing because you found them to be true and useful. But others were left behind as you discovered and forged your true self beyond your childhood years. And lastly some, I would argue, still remain unobserved and are ripe for exploration. There are so many things that our parents, our peers, and our national heritage spoon feed us as foundations to our worldviews and personal identities, but who would you be if you were born into a different time, place, or home? Let’s dig in, shall we?
I recently saw a post that said the giant undertaking of a gay person’s adult life is to crack open the personality/identity that they know and currently present to the world, and determine which parts are truly them, and which parts they created as a coping mechanism to fit in, have community, and avoid retribution or judgement from family members, classmates, and the world at large. I think all of us, regardless of sexual orientation, have done a similar thing and could use a good close look under the hood of the identities we have constructed.
A helpful exercise for us all can be asking the question, “what traits and ideas were necessary for me to adopt to exist within my family?” Maybe that was humor, or being a peacekeeper, or being straight, or being a democrat, or believing in a god. Maybe you don’t feel like you HAD to be any of your things to survive, but they were communicated as the norm, the way the world IS or OUGHT to be. I wonder who we might be if we received different messages in those formative years.
Religion can also be a function of identity more than anything else. With respect to the spiritual or religious worldviews that we’ve constructed, it can be a provoking exercise to consider the probability of you being Muslim if you were born into a Muslim family and nation. Do you think your wit would arrive at the same place you have now? There is a sample size of 1.8 billion people that might suggest one answer to that question. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Think about how the right religion always happens to be the one that we’re in. And we can’t know that we are “in” except by identifying those who are “out.” For one cannot exist without the other. How would I know that I am “smart” except by creating a categorization of people that are “less smart.” And how would I know that I am “holy” (literally meaning set-apart) except by creating a division of people who are not. I’m quoting Pete Holmes… who I believe is quoting Joseph Campbell when I say that “we like to know [that we are in], and we like to know that we know.” These “in” groups again become a function of security for our ego, on an infinite timeline.
What do you think would happen if you allowed yourself to take a spiritual “gap year”? Meaning, the freedom to separate from your current ideology, church community, and form of worship. Which do you think would foster more growth and create a more rich spiritual life 5 years from now? To do the same thing you’ve always done for the next 12 months, or take a large step away from the internal and external environments that reinforce your pre-existing ideas to see what feels true when there’s no social consequence for nonconformity. This is also applicable to those that would consider themselves atheist or another category of “non-belief”. You may discover, as I have, that there’s a whole landscape of truth and beauty that you weren’t allowing yourself to experience. You may also come back to some or all of the same beliefs, but the way you know them to be true will be much richer.
