Pagan Parents on the edge started this unintentionally with Fate and Freewill. It was sparked by the mention of the concept of someone's True Nature.
I think it can be widely accepted that while there's a growing contingent of little pagans growing up raised in their parents' faith*, most pagans 'found' paganism as they grew up, and moved to it away from what they had been raised in.
It stands to reason from there that most pagans were and/or are questioners, people who are seeking answers in and outside of themselves, on any number of topics, and go seeking answers.
That's the logical part. In my personal experience, almost every pagan I know went through a period of "trying to find myself", and some of them still are. It easily degrades into a discussion of your True self vs. the image you show the world, and what's real, and what isn't, and I've killed many a night until dawn on the various topicii**.
So I thought I'd take a minute to explain why both "trying to find yourself" as a phrase and the false assumed dichotomy between your True Self and your Public Self drives me absolutely insane.
When somebody says that an action wasn't really them, or they don't know who they are, or they haven't found themselves yet, I just want to ask -
Who else could you be?
I went through the fairly standard teenage identity crisis, though my father told me I went through it a bit early. Somewhere between 12 and 14, for the most part. I agonized over masks, and representations. I struggled with depression, anxiety, emptiness on the inside. I felt lost, and alienated, and pretty much everyone reading this knows exactly what I mean, which is something I take comfort in. It's nice to be understood.
Isn't that what being a teenager is about? Struggling with your identity? The more I struggled with it, the more lost I felt. I was by turns nice to my parents, or surly. A flirt at school, or a tomboy. Media sells the idea that you're supposed to be consistent, and that definitely made everything seem even more important. Who was I? And through this, I found faith in the Goddess leading me to peace (because she loved me no matter who I was, so it didn't matter much, see?) And I prayed, meditated, had insomnia. Until an answer unexpectedly found me.
It was like the thought inserted itself, that it didn't actually come from me. It was so sudden, so alien. I wasn't even consciously meditating - it arose from the anxiety program running silently in the background, mulling over things to be anxious about even as I went about my routine. (You all know what I'm talking about, right?)
Who else could you be?
This came loaded with overtones and subtle innuendos, but the overarching meaning was - you can't be anyone else. You are only yourself. Always. The truth of your actions and your thoughts and your feelings is the sum total of your being. Things might not be as they appear, but how they appear is an intrinsic part of it. Regardless, "I don't know who I am" is an empty statement, better described as "I don't know who I want to be", and possibly including "I don't want to face who I am right now".
Hard on the heels of this thought came the notion that I was a whiny, sleep-deprived, self-absorbed person, by all accounts and purposes for the last year or so. Also that all the pretense in the world that I knew what I was doing wasn't even fooling myself, let alone anybody else. So that was a starting point - self-absorbed I could live with. Whiny, definitely not. Some changes needed to be made.
You are what you think, what you do, how you act. That's who you are. There's no secret, much better person somewhere inside everyone, that's not really like that. And the world would be a much better place if people would just face up to that. It would also have less hypocrites.
As an end point to the rant, I'm aware that this doesn't have anything to do with the actual podcast topic that started it. It's just the phrase True Nature that gets me. And for people who aren't necessarily ashamed so much as confused - I wish they'd stop getting confused about not having a whole picture. Sure, you're lost. If someone handed you a map, you'd have no idea where you were on it. But you can see a gas station, and there's a cross roads, so make a decision, and eventually, you'll know where you are. At which point, you can figure out where you want to be. But if you just stand there, wailing, "I'm Lost!" well...you're not getting anywhere, are you?
Ok, rant complete, slack returning in 3, 2, 1...and go.
Blessed Be!
Pennanti
(The hardest thing about this post is writing in second person as little as possible. But I know it annoys the hell out of me when other bloggers do that - "you do this, and you do that" - it always puts me on the defensive as a reader, and I end up irritated and entirely missing the point, which is that the blogger was generalizing a behavior I probably recognize. Reading back through, there's still too much 2nd person, and no one would even believe how much I cut out.)
*(or spirituality or whatever, we can do a whole thing on terminology at a later date. Please take "faith" as "whatever you do in that direction"
**(Not a word. Totally should be!)
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