Who am I, really?

"The cause of my life, the intention of my life, the telos of my life is not determined by what I want to do.  Put differently, who I am is a truth to be discerned, not a choice to be decided.  What I want and what I choose may be in conflict with who I am, with who I really am.  


"We are rightly impatient with people who persistently act in a disagreeable way and then say, 'But that isn't the real me.'  We are inclined to tell them to stop fooling themselves, and that is the correct response in many cases.  At the same time, however, each of us knows the experience of acting in a way that is not true to who we are.  Maybe it is the case that what we do is who we are.  In that case, the person we say we really are is no more than the person we wish we were." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I figured I'd gradually finish this book during Lent, but it's beginning to look as if it will take me longer than that.  Am currently reflecting on this idea he's touched on about what defines who we really are.  He's right, of course, that we can't deny the connection between who we are and what we do, as some are tempted to do.  That hasn't been my tendency for a really long time.  I can't pretend that the "real" me wouldn't do something like that, because the real me obviously did.  But how "what I do" balances with "what I have done" in defining "who I am"?  That is an intriguing problem.  We can likely agree that we are neither our best moment nor our worst one, though it seems as if people want to define us by whichever of these they can see.  Since we tend to display the one and hide the other, folks can be disappointed when they encounter who we "really" turn out to be.  Ask Tiger.  And it also seems as if we tend to define others by their worst moments, while insisting we ourselves be defined by our best.

I don't know yet how Fr. Neuhaus has finished off the train of thought prompted by the innocent question that started it rolling: "I don't say it wasn't real bad, but (Jesus) did what he wanted to do, didn't he?"  It isn't as if any two people, either both doing what they want or both failing in the attempt, inspire us equally.  Most of us understand somewhere within that the scoundrel and the saint (that's going to be a song, btw), each pursuing and achieving their goals with varying degrees of success, present us with far different sorts of role models.  Few of us aspire to be really self-absorbed hedonists when we grow up, as if growing up didn't inherently imply abandoning such ways of being.  Then again, few of us ever imagined ourselves capable of our worst moments, of our most hurtful and destructive decisions along the way.

Just last week I was reflecting on the pleading of the old Supertramp number, The Logical Song: "Won't you please, please tell me what you've heard?  I know it sounds absurd, but please tell me who I am."  I probably had it out of context even as Roger Hodgson intended it.  But I am realizing that "who I am" is either the scoundrel or the saint.  If the latter - as I must allow my life to be directed, to be intended - it is because Christ has washed clean the scoundrel in me by his holy blood.


I have plenty of people telling me which they see in me, even most of those acquainted with the scoundrel (the noun seems almost too cute, almost precocious; my mother's internalized voice of integrity insists I warn you it was very bad, even as I try to cut myself some slack) in me.  I'm trying to start believing them.