Who Am I? #4: Who am I NOT?

“Neti, neti.”
“Not this, not this.”

- The Upanishads


That ol’ question, “Who am I?” prompts a lot of nervousness in we re-versioners. It is hard, when we’re trying to figure out a new path out of the cave we’ve dug ourselves into, to take that first step. Seems dangerous. Scary. Sure, there may be success there. But There Be The Failure Dragons, too, and a lot of us respond to “Who am I?” by reaching the other way: by defining who we are NOT.

“Not” is an important start. It closes the paths we don’t want to explore. It helps define what we might want to do.

Here's the rub, though -- it leaves "billions and billions" (apologies to Carl Sagan) of options from which we still have to choose. And sometimes, we’re so busy pushing away from what we are “not,” we neglect to embrace what we are. Hard to land a foothold in emptiness. Leaning on “not” means wandering the world like an Indian sadhu/holy man, murmuring “Neti, neti” (“Not this, not this”) at what you see/feel/think/experience until you pretty much have clobbered everything but god out of your life.

In India, people expect men who have raised their families and achieved their adult goals to chuck it all and sadhu for a few years, doing the “neti” thing. It’s a holy, an honorable, a good path.

In the West, not so much.

There is another way – a way that uses “neti, neti” to find what is YES (as opposed to what is NOT).

Think about what you are “not.” Say it. Write it. Define it. Then turn it around: Look at everything you can imagine standing around that “not”: What do you see? What IS there? Why are you so determined to define yourself as a “not”? What can you grab outside of the “not” that is a “something” instead of a “nothing”?


The source of “not”

Some “not”s don’t come naturally to us, but are pounded into us by our well-meaning others. A million years ago I met a very successful attorney in a “new careers” workshop. She did corporate law, made a ton o’ bucks, highly respected, written up in the law reviews, etc., etc., etc. Yet here she was trying to re-version herself, way back then, with all us little folk – who were nowhere near as “successful,” according to the world.

The instructor led us through a close-your-eyes-and-dream-while-you-listen-to-this-music exercise, which promptly made me impatient (in those days, I steered clear of the touchy-feelies – too many hippie experiences, I guess). As we went around the room, “revealing” our dreams to strangers (another thing I couldn’t muster), we came to the corporate attorney.

“And what did you dream, dear?” asked the workshop leader.

The attorney burst into tears.

“I want to draw bunnies!” she cried.

All righty, then. We all sat pretty silent.

But here’s the thing: the woman loved bunnies. Had always loved bunnies. Always wanted to draw their cute little tweaky noses and flitchy ears and soft curvy backs. Wanted to do the Beatrice Potter thing. Wanted to fulfill a childhood fantasy that her parents always said was NOT realistic, NOT doable, NOT a moneymaker, NOT something people cared about and why would she want to draw them?

She listened to all that “not” for a long time – through law school and the reviews and the corporate stuff and the success – until she discovered that getting successful in what you are “not” not only doesn’t make you happy – it brings the “not” into even more relief and makes you want to do it all the more.

The attorney quit her practice. She started drawing bunnies. She built a highly successful greeting card business where she was paid big bucks to draw her bunnies until they came out of her un-bunny-like ears.


Using the “not”s

So here’s a few things to remember when we try and define ourselves through our “not”s instead of our “I am”s.

• Turn your “not”s inside out. See what they ARE. Write those things down, touch them, feel them, play with them. Who knows? Your re-version may be hiding right around the edges of a little “not” you’ve been avoiding for a long time.

• Some “not”s are pressed into us by others. You can’t squelch those “not”s – sooner or later, the bunnies come back. Why put it off if the bunnies are going to haunt you anyway? Besides, how old will you be in five years if you don’t draw your bunnies?

So check our your “not”s. Turn the real ones inside out. Embrace the bunnies, and see where they lead. And if they point down a path you don’t want to explore, why, change your mind. It’s allowed.