I am a person 1.11.24

“Jill, you are a character.”

Slight pause and slow scourn, I would reply, “no I’m not. I am a person!”

I’m not sure what all I did or said, but I know my three year old self was certain of one thing… that I was a person. I hadn’t thought about that for quite some time, (although, through my years, my parents have reminded me of this. It makes me realize where my kids perhaps inherited some of their stubbornness and sass). When do we figure out as young children, who we are. I was more certain of my status at that time in my life, than perhaps any other time.

As we travel through life, I’ve observed that we seem to be on a path to seek and find ourselves. Our society helps us out by encouraging us, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” “What are you? Are you a dancer, do you play baseball? Maybe you’re a budding artist.” We put labels on all that we do as “persons”. I’m not sure why we do this, because then as we grow, we start to question ourselves when we un-do the things we’ve done.

If you are a stay at home parent, or perhaps changed jobs or through the seasons of change that we all face in our lives, we question ourselves. Who am I? We place value not really on who we are, but what we are.

I don’t think I was wrong in my three year old self. I was and still am a person. While my body breathes on this green earth, I’m a person. Sometimes, I think we also forget that we are also more than that in ways that we probably can’t explain and very likely can’t even comprehend.

I bring this up, because as I became a stay at home mom, I noticed something that never happened before in my life; I started to question my self worth through the process of justifying myself to both myself and others. It was like I placed such a high value on the “doing” in life, that I forgot that simply being was enough. I bring this up, because maybe you too have placed much value on our doing. It’s because it’s what all of us know.

What if, as we raise our children, we slowly drop the idea of being the doer or label of what they do as they go through life. What if our kids learned that they already are both person and soul and if they look how to balance those two aspects of themselves, they will learn more about what experiences to have than what they want to “be”. Hear me out, I am not promoting that our kids just sit and meditate all day long and exist, I’m talking about teaching them how to dig deeper into their knowing so that they don’t just follow what culture and society tell them to do or be.

The truth is, there is no how to do this. We all have to look within and ask ourselves these questions and follow our own paths. If we start doing this, I think we will set the stage for generations to start knowing they are more than just a person.