Who are you? You can answer with your name. But that’s merely the word by which you are called.
You can say that you are an engineer or artist. But that indicates what you do, or describes your career.
If you are proud of your lineage, you may point to the fact that you are the daughter of King X or Y. But that merely indicates your relation to another human being.
You could say that you are a human being in the twenty-first century who reside in a specific location. But that merely points to the locale of your aleatory existence.
You may answer with certitude that you are the son or daughter of God. But such a claim would merely signify that you associate yourself with the identity of another being, or that you subscribe to a set of concepts associated with that specific god.
You may point out that you are created from dust and that you are a spirit that inhabit this bodily frame or you can point to the fact that you are a cluster of atoms that were born billions of years ago in the belly of a star. But both these lines of argument merely describe the substance and process by which your existence came about in the first place.
We could go on…
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.
Perhaps such a line of inquiry makes you uncomfortable. Surely, I am I?
But who… am I? Shall we start again at the beginning?
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.
Perhaps, today, you can embark on a new relationship with doubt, with the mystery of being.
Who are you? You, are a mystery.
About the photos:
Actor, Greg Kriek
Sea Point, Cape Town 2018