Who am I?

No, I'm not being melodramatic, mad, or listening to Les Miserables while feeling lonely and miserable (yes, all your people out there.. wince at my humour...), but a poem, written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Who Am I
Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?


Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.


Sometimes I feel like I've moved on from not knowing what I want, to simply not knowing who I am. I still remember that a fav topic of a female staff in Campus Crusade when I was just a freshman, was on the question of my Identity in Christ. And it seemed that for the 2 subsequent years that I've gotten to know Charis, that topic invariably came up. And now I wonder if it wasn't such a bad idea after all, that she kept harping about it.

There are mainly 2 reasons for repeating something all the time - you either hope to drill it into the minds of people, or else it os the other - you seek to keep reminding yourself. And sometimes when I question who I am, when measured up against what I desire out of life nowadays, I really don't know who I am anymore. Days when I feel like what he said - weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making.

Poeple ask me what's wrong, and I don't know. Am just feeling really heavy hearted, like I'm an 80 yr old man with the weight of the world on my shoulders. But I'd feel utterly silly saying that, knowing the real burdens that some people actually shoulder. Yet in my mind, my burden's as heavy, and as without a name or a form. The only thing that seems real about it is the weight it leaves in my mind and my shoulders.

I shd have been born an idiot. That way I'd weep more over the death of Kurt Cobain than I would feel any weight at all on my shoulders. Airheads tend to be pretty light after all. Grins.