Good thread. My opinion is that your identity is a combination of your thoughts and actions. You can only define yourself by the things you think about and the things you do. And others can only identify you by the things you say or do or another way of putting it is by your actions, since they cannot read your thoughts. You are not only one thing, unless you only think about and only do one single thing every day, which is impossible. We are complex, and have many layers to our identity. As Chavez said, he is many things depending on what he’s doing at the time, and I also believe what he is thinking about is part of that. Think of it like ingredients in a food item. We name or identify the food item based on the ingredients that make up that food item. That is how our identity is determined, by the ingredients that make us up. As we grow and change so does our identity. I am not the same person I was 20 years ago. I resemble that person, but I have changed mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. We are a work in progress, we will never just settle on one identity, we will evolve and that is a good thing. That’s what’s great about our existence, is we have the ability to be whatever it is we want to be (within reason). If you question your identity, spend some time thinking about what is really important to you and focus on thinking about those things and doing those things, and your identity will become more clear to you. I believe one’s identity is an important aspect of one’s life and the fulfillment of it. You should feel at peace with who you are at the end of the day. If you aren’t at peace with that, get to work on your thoughts and actions and focus in on what you WANT to be or identify as.
See? Last night I was “cool dad”, a chew toy, a goalie, a “hack”, today I’m a boat mechanic, and hopefully a wannabe surfer on Sunday. I’m cool with all of it.
I used to be a hardcore advocate of the same philosophy as you, and I have to admit I've moved just a tiny bit toward the other end of the spectrum in recent years (not coincidentally, the first time in my life my household earnings have exceeded expenses for any period of time longer than about a week). My thinking was always that I have too many potentially expensive hobbies (guitars, bikes, skis, snowboards, surfboards and wetsuites, etc.) and investing in top of the line equipment in any one of them would mean I'd have to give up the others for financial reasons. So I rode beater boards, I pedaled shitty beater bikes, I skied on... literally anything, especially the season I skied 51 days in VT and developed a serious addiction to poaching closed tree trails in any conditions, including in november and april... every time I destroyed a pair of skis I pretty much found the cheapest/free-est next pair I could, regardless of quality. At one point I was on a pair of skinny straight skis from the 80s for a couple months until I snapped one in half on a mogul run. But I digress. I lived by the mantra of it's not the equipment, it's the engine. I figured there's two ways to get better at [insert hobby]: I could either buy new toys, or practice more, and my bank account only allowed one of those options. The clearest example was playing guitar... my friends that played were constantly buying new effects pedals or guitars or upgrading their equipment. I thought that was idiotic... if I want to sound better why wouldn't I just practice more, it's free and will produce the same effect. That line of thinking worked beautifully with guitar... ended up getting a master's in jazz studies on a $350 guitar (which sounds amazing for it's price and is still my only electric guitar and I love it and it's probably good I didn't spend thousands on one since 0% of my income is derived from my music degrees now). It worked less well in other regards. Yeah I probably got in better shape riding cheaper, heavier mountain bikes. But I also had more than a couple epic rides cut short when my bike broke, followed by long ass hikes back to the car while my friends finished the ride. Yeah I can get down a mountain on basically anything resembling a pair of skis (or on one ski), and I enjoy laughing at my friend who's recently become a ski tuning whore when he borrows my skis (which are nice now but I still never tune them) and looks like he's trying to run on ice. But I’m sure some of my epic crashes and ensuing aches and pains were due to my dull edges and poor quality gear, and in hindsight definitely took some stupid unnecessary risks skiing no-fall lines with remedial equipment.
[cont'd] In the past few years I’ve finally been able to upgrade some of my gear, and it makes a bigger difference than I had convinced myself it would all those years. A halfway decent mountain bike ($1300 hardtail, nothing crazy but more than twice the cost of anything I’d ridden previously). A similarly priced acoustic guitar. Decent relatively modern skis, with custom fit, custom footbed boots that are 90% as comfortable as snowboard boots. It makes a huge difference. Both in the performance level and in my enjoyment of the sport/hobby (due to both comfort and fewer repair/tuning headaches). Rented a halfway decent road bike (in the $1000 range so nothing crazy relatively speaking, but new and modern) that’s the right size for me for the first time in my life a couple weeks ago and it was night and day vs. my $100 beater from the 80s. Maybe I’ve just gotten soft, but I am taking a less hardline stance than I used to. It’s the engine and the equipment. That said, I’m a strong believer that as a beginner, definitely focus on the engine first. If the fundamental problem is that you suck at a sport/hobby, fix that directly rather than throwing money at it trying to cover up that fact. But there can definitely come a point where the engine is strong and the equipment becomes a liability. I spent years denying that, and it caused a lot of frustration, logistical complexity, and repair headaches (especially in the case of bikes). This is all a tangent but it got me thinking. I am still trying to organize my thoughts on the original topic of the tread, regarding identity etc… def a good and thought-provoking discussion.
Some deep posts in this thread. All pretty true. Were all just living creatures just trying to get through to the other side, if there is another side.
I remember a little while back I was jogging (no idea why) and some kid was in my way. His mom said "Tommy look out for that runner". For the rest of the time I just thought 'I am a runner, since when?' Not sure what I am getting at but one simple act of just jogging - and thus I became a runner in somebodies mind, even though that ain't me.
Temporal, and temporary indeed. Great reminder to just be present and live in the moment ( while also planning for the future.
