Is it a coincidence that I’ve been pondering the concept of “who am I?” while I’m in a place like Cambodia? Where the French occupation, Khmer Rouge genocide and the Vietnam war isn’t so far in Cambodia’s historical past and as the people are bringing back their culture, society and countries identity? I don’t find it such a coincidence, if there are such things as coincidence.
Its been six months of traveling and I could feel how easy it was to walk through the main outdoor local market in Phnom Penh yesterday versus the main market in Varanasi, India back in September. I don’t speak any Khmer and hardly anyone spoke English. The broken concrete roads littered with garbage and blood from the butchering of meat and fish that do not get washed away by any humans as they did in Thailand or by the rains of mother nature in the dry season. And I managed to get everything I wanted so I could cook food at “home”. I found a young man running a shop for his elder mother who spoke a little English and he was happy to have a conversation with me. I felt peaceful and part of the big picture, even if I did have moments where I thought the people were talking about me. ????
Having experienced the depths of inclusion with many different families, groups and cultures is stripping away any remainder of a belief that I may have had left inside of myself that I must only be associating with those who look like me, talk like me and believe the same things as me. This old and isolating belief has become redundant, counter productive and more importantly, impossible to maintain as I travel like this through multiple countries and cultures. We have become global citizens in ways that our grandfathers and grandmothers were not. We are being stripped down of our beliefs of who we think we are culturally, religiously and personally and transcending into a more respectful and understanding way of acknowledging each other’s differences. We are all the same… remember?
I have become one of those modern global nomads traveling great distances in short amount of times. Visiting world landmarks like Angkor Wat, the Ghats of Varanasi, The Emerald Buddha, The Killing Fields, and The Himalayas. As I begin to overcome old ingrained concepts and ideas of separations and divisions between people, physically and spiritually, there has emerged an opposing reaction, the fear of losing my identity in a world where it’s so easy to move around in and in a constant state of change. Losing my identity… who am I anyways?
Identity? What identity? Self-Identity? How I see myself in the local community of Maine where I have been living for 25 years? Or, now in a world of communities? Do I really identify myself through my work as a culinary arts professor on sabbatical? The son from a middle class, Chicago, Illinois, Jewish family? A middle aged, overweight, privileged white westerner? I might be seeking to identify and define myself by my cultural traits, religious upbringing, family orientation, geographic attachments, personal lifestyle, spoken language, eating preferences, physical attributes and many more. Am I using these qualities to define who I am, give me some idea of self-identity and give me some security of who I might be in relationship to the world as a whole? Who am I anyway if I am not any of the aforementioned?
We have seen the collapse of the Berlin wall and are currently seeing more walls rising in the USA and the middle east. Why do we still even see genocide in the 21st century? It’s not the desire to preserve one’s own identity that is the problem. The problem is when our identity becomes a tool or a direct way for the exclusion and dis-empowerment of others.
As I sit here in my third story room directly across the street from the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh I get the opportunity to ponder how I might perceive my own self-identity after these 6-months of travel. I have been transported beyond any idea I may have conceived about myself which has left me feeling liberated, with a sense of freedom and an escape from any restricting thoughts. I’ve had moments of riding through the rice patties of Cambodia and thinking, am I really still in this body of mine? As if I am joining with something else that my mind cannot understand. I become part of the whole, the whole becomes part of me and I know I am not separate. In that moment, I have temporarily given up the limited awareness of any kind of label through which I may identify myself as and I have lost the fear of oneness with the whole and of my own death.
I am certain of the truth of who I am (my identity) because any thoughts and words I could possibly use to describe myself could only be limiting. The love I have for myself and the world has replaced any thoughts or preconceived worldly concepts. It’s where you and I BOTH become limitless together. I have become one with something beyond my own self-identity and body, simply by not letting any limitations of the thoughts in my mind get in the way.
Who are YOU?
Leave a Reply