I find it quite sad that so many people never find out who they really are. It seems, from rather simple observation, that the lucky ones among us tend to discover who they really are rather late in life. I have a number of nomad friend whom I think have discovered their real selves, but even most of them were well into adulthood.
If you have read any of my philosophical essays on social systems, you will know that I believe that social systems (i) tell us who we are, what we believe and set expectations on our lives and behavior. This is quite unfortunate because it leave us totally out of the loop. What is the current popular acronym? WTF? It's our life. What right do social systems have telling us who we are.
My Mother has been called a "spitfire". Sometimes that was meant as a compliment. She defied her father, who was speaking for the social system, and refused to just get married and start having babies. She went to college. Well, college was interrupted by WWII, but when I was eleven years old and she graduated from Indiana University, you wouldn't find a more proud father. Sadly, I'm not sure she ever discovered who she really was. She had lots of talents. She earned her PhD when she was over 60 years old. The up side is that I don't think she ever stopped trying to find out, even though I don't think she was conscious she was looking.
My Father was again limited and pidgeon-holed by the social systems. Returning from WWII as a disabled vet, he completed his PhD with a specialty in US Constitution. He was strongly recruited by the US Department of State but the social systems told him that he shouldn't risk taking a family to foreign countries. He turned down an unbelievable opportunity. He was cautious to the extreme. Even though he had a good career and retired as a highly respected professor, knowing him, he wasn't happy. He learned about our family roots in Ireland. That seemed to be a turning point in his discover of who he really was. He studied Irish history and became Cainteoir Gaeilge (Irish speaker), which, by the way, is one of the primary reasons that I ended up moving to Ireland and starting my PhD. By the time he retired at 65, he was spending three months a year in Ireland. Part of that time was spent on the west coast where they don't speak English, and part of that time was in Belfast. He started a program where he brought Belfast teenagers from both sides of the trouble to the US where they could get to know each other on neutral ground and become leaders of peace. It was a very successful program. The program meant that he spent a lot of time in the middle of the dangers of Belfast and he told me stories of being followed by "protestant" gangs and rescued by the provisional IRA and being on the English MI6 watch list. He enjoyed Irish dancing into his 80s, founded a very active Irish heritage group, and traveled the country visiting or presenting at Irish festivals. He had learned who he was and it wasn't the frightened, bespeckled academic he had been taught to be.
It would be interesting, but I'm afraid that it would be depressing, to know how many people actually have the opportunity to learn who they really are. I'm seventy-four years old. Until I was twenty-one I spent as much time out in the mountains and forests as possible. I loved sleeping on the ground under a tree, canoeing down a fast stream, being in the middle of a forest far from humanity. It would have been interesting to know where that love might have led me, but, alas, my future was dictated by social systems. It was understood that I would become some sort of academic or professional. Ending up in medical school was a bit of a surprise, but it was in keeping with the dictates of my social systems. It was understood that I would end up in a "helping" profession. I have to credit my eldest grandson with being the catalyst of my enlightenment.
My eldest grandson, who was about seven at the time, wanted to run a 5k race at Disney World. His father had had a hip replacement, his mother was running the half-marathon, and his two sisters were in college. Even though I walked with a cane due to arthritis, I figured that I could hobble along for 3.1 miles. I didn't know there was a time limit. Long story short, I learned to walk, then run, and fell in love with running to the point that I was soon doing ultras - running 40-60 miles through mountains and deserts. It brought me back to what the social systems had forced me to give up when I was young. I started traveling the country running and living in a 5x8 cargo trailer that I fitted out with a bed, galley, chest of drawers, and table.
I lost my wife in 2011. Being disabled by a serious heart condition and a host of other problems, she had been my biggest cheerleader. Then I met Pamela in December of 2013. She had been a tri-athlete. She became my catalyst, my fast-track, to learning who I really am. We clicked and by the spring of 2014 we had hit the road together in a sixteen foot 1980 trailer. We worked as volunteers for Glacier National Park. That's how we ended up Montana residents.
It was this opporunity that enabled me to learn who I really am. The farther off the grid we lived, the happier I was. We went to the deserts of southwestern Arizona for the winter and fell in love with the desert. Again, the farther off the grid, the happier I was. I can't express how happy I was to find myself, and I can't thank Pamela enough for helping me.
Thanks to Pamela and our nomadic life, I learned who I am. I find that I love being a nomad. I love living and sauntering through the wilderness. It is my natural home. I don't want a place to settle down. Sticks-n-bricks; the nomad's term for houses, scare me. I'm also pretty much of a recluse. If it weren't for Pamela, I'd be happy by myself for great lengths of time, as long as I had the wilderness. We are currently riding out the pandemic in a lovely home, with a wonderful 1.25 acre hollow, in a nice western Kentucky town. I'm happy spending my time here with Pamela. Nevertheless, I'm desperately homesick for the wilderness. I've learned who I really am.
It is sad that it should take so long for the lucky few of us who learn who we really are. It is even more sad that so many people; I'd guess a vast majority; never have the opportunity. I can't help but wonder whether the real problem with humanity is that most people never have the opportunity to discover the real "me". The more I study social systems, the more I find them the source of our misbehavior, our unhappiness and the barriers to becoming who we really are, the more angry I become. Perhaps, rather than try to make sense of the horrible destructive, violent, apathetic society, I should be focusing on how people can overcome the social systems that misdirect us, mislead and misinform us, and create the evil, destructive, violent creatures we've become.
With this realization, my heart goes out to the uneducated, misdirected masses who have become the almost mindless, definitely unsuspecting, slaves of the social systems. It will be hard to free them. The social systems love to vilify the intellectuals; i.e. people who think on their own. It appears to be coming down to a battle between the social systems and the intellectuals. The prize is the freedom of the masses who still think that "this is all there is in life."
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