Who are you? You could answer with your name, but that’s merely the word by which you are called.
You could say that you are an engineer or an artist. But that would only indicate what you do, or would describe your career.
If you are proud of your lineage, you would want to say that you are the son or daughter of King X or Y. But that would merely indicate your relation to another human being.
You could say that you are a human being in the twenty-first century who resides in a specific location. But that would merely point to the locale of your aleatory existence.
You might answer with certitude that you are the son or daughter of God. But that does not say who you are. Such a claim would merely signify that you associate yourself with the identity of this God and that you subscribe to a set of beliefs or concepts associated with that specific God.
You might point out that you are a spirit who inhabits this bodily frame, or you'd prefer to point to the fact that you are a cluster of atoms that formed 4.5 billion years ago in the belly of a star. But both these lines of argument would merely describe the substance and process by which your existence came about in the first place.
There’s something fundamentally inexplicable about who you are. There’s no amount of knowledge to dispel the ineffability of your appearance here, in this galaxy, on earth, in this locale.
Who are you?
Faith demands the absolute, requires certainty and desires security.
Doubt, however, surrenders to the lack of evidence. It is patient and humble. It resists the imposition of meaning.
Who are you? You, are a mystery.
About the photos:
Actor, Greg Kriek
Sea Point, Cape Town 2018
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Edited: Sep 6th, 2020