Defining a life
We use labels to define ourselves, and many are the debates in the Druid community about who is and isn’t entitled to call themselves a Druid. Worry not, I am not poised to bore you witless with one of *those*. Instead, I’ve been thinking about how we chose our labels in the first place. Not even in terms of what we necessarily put into the public domain, but how we think about ourselves.
One of the things about being an author is that I have to cough up little biographical statements on a fairly regular basis. My twitter statement is short but typical “Ponderer, singer of songs, teller of stories, activist, author, chaotic Green Druid Steampunk folky wench. Attached in all ways to Tom Brown.” Almost all of that pertains to stuff I do in my working life, with a hint of achievement (that author and Druid stuff is no small source of pride) and my marital status. I think this is normal. Jobs, achievements, living arrangements, income, possessions, family… these are the markers we use to talk about who we are. And yet, none of that is ‘me’ it’s just some of what I do when awake.
In my late teens I would have self identified very differently. I hadn’t achieved much, had no money, a part time job, a lot of aspirations. At that time in my life, I constructed my identity around the people, activities and places I loved. There was no requirement to write biographies back then, so there are no examples, but if I had, it would have looked more like “passionate about books, and sitting on hills at night, playing Beethoven on the piano until my hands break, totally dedicated to my band, I love to dance, love cats, love my friends, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, and some other names I won’t add to protect the innocent…”
An identity constructed around love is not as vulnerable to what you achieve. It doesn‘t depend on externally measurable things, on success or possessions, or even on that love being reciprocated. At the same time, there is wild and ferocious energy in it. This is the identity that strides determined into each new day, and faces up to challenges with a passion. This is the self that knows exactly what matters most, and expresses that in ways that are as joyful as they are driven.
I’m still passionate about music, although violin and bouzouki have taken the place of piano and drums. I’m still passionate about books, although I’ve lost some things around my own writing, but perhaps I can find that again. I still love to sit on hills at night and am even more besotted with landscape than I was, which has contributed to my devotion to Green politics. I don’t dance so much, still adoring of my friends and if anything more obsessed with Neil Gaiman, and other people, whose names I won’t add, to protect the innocent… Steampunk, folk and Druid communities inspire and delight me.
I haven’t really changed that much. Most of what has changed is how I think about these things, how I frame those aspects of self. So I’m going to stop thinking about who I am in terms of what I achieve, and go back to thinking about who I am in terms of who and what I am insanely, obsessively, life definingly in love with. (Attached in all ways to Tom Brown.)
