Continuing the conversation on the separateness of truth and reality, I have been thinking of how this applies to the essence of who I am as a person.

Often who we envision ourselves to be is not who we really are. We have a warped perspective. We build up narratives to paint a picture of who we are and explain why we acted in particular ways. But those stories aren’t necessarily real.

For example, there have been times that I behaved in ways that did not correspond to the person I thought I was. I have always seen myself as a dedicated and engaged student. But last semester I completely lost motivation in my classes and stopped doing most of my assignments and readings.

Because I was unwilling to change my actions at the time, I was left with a feeling of cognitive dissonance. My actions were actively contradicting who I knew myself to be. Something had to give. Instead of shifting my behavior to match who I wanted to be, my perception of self began to erode. I gradually came to see myself as someone who was lazy, ineffective, dispassionate, worthless.

But that wasn’t true. I was acting lazy, I was behaving ineffectively, I was feeling dispassionate and worthlessness. That is not who I was or who I am.

As the semester is beginning and I am getting much busier than the summer and my established routines are being reworked it’s been difficult to maintain the standards that I had in place. Even with this website. I feel like I’m falling behind. But, I keep reminding myself that how I act one day is not who I am.

There is an immovable core to my personhood that is independent of my actions, feelings, and even my thoughts. Like the never-ending flow of breath through my nostrils, this force keeps me grounded and helps me to continue with my blog, my homework, and my goals despite not always acting in a way that aligns to who I want to become.