I'm Just Me

My niece Ashlyn will be three-years-old in June, a fact she won’t miss an opportunity to tell you within seconds of meeting her. “When will you be three?” an uncle asked her when she told him the big news. “On my birthday!” she said.

Her twos were not so terrible as everyone said that they might be, though recently, toward the tail end of her second year, she’s developed what at first I interpreted to be an attitude. “That’s mine,” she told me when I picked up one of her toys. “They’re mine,” she said when she showed me her new fish, “It’s not yours. You can’t have them.” At first, I reassured her that I wouldn’t take her things, thinking maybe her new little sister might be making her feel jealous. After awhile, I explained that we all need to share things, especially things we like. Later, annoyed, I started to just ignore it whenever she did the mine and yours thing with me.

Loquita! (Crazy little girl!) I told her with wide eyes the other day when she was acting rambunctious. “No, I’m just Ashlyn,” she said back. I laughed thinking that because she didn’t understand the Spanish she assumed I’d called her some other name and corrected me, but another time I complimented one of her drawings by saying she was an artist and she said, “No. I’m just me,” and I got it.

Ashlyn’s learning a language and developing identity, figuring out what’s hers and who she is.

Thirty-two years from now I wonder if she’ll be trying to peel it all off of her Self too?

“Mine” is a word with a lot attached to it. More and more often I find myself working on unlearning it. Mine hurts, when it’s said to you by someone unwilling to share. It stings when others don’t see value in what you’re holding up as yours. Mine is selfish sometimes and draws boundaries around itself. Mine doesn’t play well with others. Mine doesn’t always endure.

But “me”, I think that she’s understood that one perfectly and I hope she doesn’t lose that. The older we get it seems to me we begin to wrap ourselves up in our “mines”. I am becomes I am a writer, I am employed, I am North American, I am a homeowner, I am married, I am beautiful. The more we try to identify ourselves, define ourselves, by the things we think we own the more complicated life becomes.

What do we really own anyway? More importantly, who are we underneath the shelter of all our possessions? Unfortunately we don’t come to that until we lose something big, which inevitably we all do.

If we could teach our children that nothing in life is really theirs right from the beginning, would we rob them of their lessons? What might the world be like then?

If entire languages can disappear across the ages, what would it hurt to drop a few words from our own?

Could we ever agree to just drop possessive pronouns and just be our Selves?

Photo by Federico Di Fresco