I'm Nobody

“I want to be a morning person,” I declared.  “Tell me, how does it work exactly?” My fellow volunteer furrowed her brow and cocked her head at the question, as if to say, “what the hell do you mean, you just get up early.”

 And so I took her unspoken advice.   After years of labeling myself a night owl, of blaming my sleep habits on biology, circadian rhythm, and even moon cycles, and of having only glimpsed sunrise on occasion, I shifted my life to a morning schedule.  Moreover, this simple action shifted my thinking, because after two weeks of simply getting up early, I was confounded.  I wondered:  How is it that this ability eluded me my entire life?

Then something else happened that gave me insight into the answer.  I was at a public planning meeting for International Women’s Day, a widely- celebrated holiday in Cameroon that is comprised of a full week of activities.  The meeting was a formal affair crowded with women, directors of different government departments, and regional political delegates.  At one point, the delegates gave the floor to the public and a microphone was passed to those who wished to speak.  Before I even had time to think about it, I found myself in the front of the room with a microphone, speaking in merely passable French to the crowd about wanting to share my American culture.  After I sat back down, immediately, I asked myself, What the hell just happened?  What was that –  Who was that?  Because the Tina I knew was afraid of public speaking, and sure as hell was afraid of public-speaking in French at some big shot meeting.

And that’s when I realized.  I had broken free from my own label. For years and years I told myself that I was a bad public speaker.  I’d even thrown away a medal I’d won in a speech contest because I thought it was a lie.  Yet all this time, it was just my own thinking that had held me back.  The ability was always there, I just couldn’t find it until I set aside my beliefs about myself.

Moreover, I realized the deeper truth of what this meant:  the Buddhist teaching that there was no “self.”  I began to think of other labels I used, even the “good” ones:  feminist, bellydancer, writer, lawyer.  And I saw that I wasn’t really any of these things, because they were just names ascribed to actions that I could or could not do.  Even my own name, Tina, was a label, because without it I was still me.  I thought about all the times when I was called “Nassara” and I had resisted it, sometimes becoming angry and demanding, “My name is Tina.”  In resisting the name, I was trying to reclaim my identity.  But what identity is there when there are only actions that make us who we are? And even our actions cease when we die.  Thus, I have not changed my labels from “night owl” to “morning person” or “bad public speaker” to “good public speaker.”  Instead, I’ve chosen to give them up entirely and just let me be who I am.