I M Not Sure What I Stand for

Dear Eva,

I'm not sure who I am and wondered if you could help. Obviously I know who I am, but I mean more in a spiritual and emotional sense. I've always been more pragmatic and less principled than my partner, but over the last few years it's like our differences have been amplified. They've become creatively very successful – they have "a thing". Meanwhile I feel like a passenger – not through disinterest but because I can take things or leave them. The trouble is that that inert state doesn't seem very helpful. I do vaguely creative work but it doesn't fulfil me personally. My days have no pattern and I'm not sure what I stand for and where I'm heading. Most people seem to know the answers to these things, so why don't I?

S

When I first read this letter, I bristled. I put it down and distracted myself with the internet and some toast for a while, and when I returned, I tried to work out what it was that had irritated me so much. It wasn't the letter writer – I feel for you, S, and picture you standing quite still by a window somewhere, your nails chewed and a little raw. It wasn't the problem, which is large and tangled, and familiar to many people I know. I read it again, and realised the thing that pricked was the idea that it is possible for anybody to truly know themselves. The idea that the self is something that, like a button or word, is there somewhere whole and waiting to be found.

You say you feel like a passenger, but the description you give is not of a person in motion. Instead it's of someone who feels like they've been left behind at the station. I think at various points in a longterm relationship it's a good idea to look around at the rooms you've built, touch things and turn them over, "reestablish" yourself in the "space". What does your partnership mean to you, today? Perhaps you have been in the supportive role for a while now, and now it's their turn to look after you, help you step out of their shadow, if only for a minute. Then, instead of allowing your partner's success to illuminate the ways you feel yourself failing, could you use it to propel yourself forward? Could it inspire you to sketch out your own routines, find your own fulfilling project? And (this is, I'll admit, a deeply unfashionable thing to say) what if what you stand for needn't be something grand and epic, but instead modest and achievable, leaning into your pragmatism? "Helpfulness" rather than "carbon neutrality", "making a nice dinner for my family with the leftover rice" rather than "ending world hunger". And what if "where you're heading" need not be measured by the public success of your partner, but instead became a simple place of comfort and peace? How would that be?

My problem with the idea of finding yourself comes from the itchy suspicion that there is no single self to be found. The act of classifying oneself, saying you know who you are, seems to me inevitably reductive, as we all continue to change every day, every moment. Those who appear to know themselves have, I think, actually made a choice – to focus, sometimes bullishly, on one element of their personalities, and every time they say it aloud it becomes more true. Partly because it closes doors on alternative paths.

I see the process of growing and ageing more like reading a book, where every page reveals another piece of the story, rather than excavating a ruin in order to find the gold amulet of you-ness beneath. Those who are more cautious or less sure of their step, like you or me, can sometimes feel lost beside these people who loudly tell you who they are. But often it's not because of any failure on our part, instead just a difference in how we process our individual daily chaos. I hope this helps a little. It has helped me.

I M Not Sure What I Stand for

Source: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/lost-sense-of-self

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