Identity – Crisis or Liberation

In my last article I wrote about the shift from older to elder and I used the metaphor of the transformation of the caterpillar to the butterfly, through a journey of what poet T S Eliot describes as the ‘way wherein there is no ecstasy’.  That is poet-speak for ‘its really not pretty’. The caterpillar I can see – it’s got a clear identity. The butterfly I can see – it also has a clear identity.  But the threshold between these two identities is the gloop, as we called it last time, the indescribable mess from which the new arises, without which there is no ‘new’, just rehashed, warmed up ‘old’.

I have been turning a magnifying glass on to that gloop in my own life’s transition and have finally been able to call it what it is – a breaking down of identity. It is a story that I’m hearing more and more from those who are able to honestly talk about the older to elder journey in their own lives. 

Developing our identity probably isn’t talked about enough. You start by being conceived and born (forgive the statement of the obvious). You are just you. A bundle of vulnerability, need and potential. You are alive. You exist. You are here. Then we begin that long process of creating a necessary identity for ourselves. Who am I? And that project is just that…a project. Our egos are trying to build something that isn’t necessarily true, but it works. It gets us through our life (to be honest, it’s a real mixture of deep truths and temporarily helpful constructions).  A lot of this project is forged by trial and error. Do I get my needs met by shouting loudly, or being silent? If shouting loudly, then I become ‘the loud one’, if silence then I become ‘the quiet one’.  Do I get love by conforming to all my parents’ wishes and ambitions, or do I get more attention by disagreeing with them? My teacher says I am great at art, so I am an artist. My teacher says my painting was rubbish, so I am not an artist. There are a million interactions at play that shape the story of ‘this is who I am’. My identity. By adulthood we then take this scaffolding and put it to the test in our serious adult relationships and serious career or life choices.

By mid-life I had my labels that I’d given to myself. Trevor gets things done. Trevor makes things happen. I’m the ideas guy. I’m a leader. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m about justice. I’m a good friend. I’m an intuitive. I’m a fantastic dad. And there were other scaffold poles to my identity that I was less keen to identify with, so I endeavoured to keep them in the shadows. I did this by overplaying the identity markers I liked best and that I felt would get me respected in the world. I borrowed energy from the perceived acceptable parts of myself to keep silent or neutralise the parts of my identity that I felt would not get me respect. And I wanted an identity that you would respect, that you would say of me, ‘I see this guy Trevor, He’s quietly impressive. Look at what he’s done in the world’ (I cringe as I write this now). Owning an identity of perceived weakness, vulnerability, fear, anger, sensitivity – these I supposed would not be good. Good equals an identity project built on many truths, but also full of what I perceived I needed to make life work for me in giving me the respect I longed for. We practice these attitudes and behaviours over the decades, along with the deep emotional attachments, so they become ‘me’.

This is the caterpillar project.  The build-an-identity-that-is-clear-recognisable-and-useful-in-the-world, project. Everyone knows a caterpillar is a caterpillar.  They are instantly recognisable at a glance. Its identity is clear.  That clarity is what we all build towards. That is until we, like the caterpillar, start the journey across the threshold from the first to the second half of life.  

I recently watched Robert De Niro in the film The Intern. At age 70 he describes retiring from his job and everything familiar disappearing. All his defining identity coat-hangers – his wife, getting up to go to work each day, being recognised and respected by colleagues – all disappeared and he no longer knew who he was. No one can describe to you the pain of a loss of identity. No one wants to talk about it because it feels shameful and an admission that you were once a useful human being and now feel like you are occupying space.  This is the gloop where the caterpillar is now just an inert looking chrysalis who, at worst, looks dead already and at best, a little shrivelled and uninteresting.

We try to make this chrysalis-self look as acceptable as possible with twice weekly golf, a stint at the food bank and baby-sitting the grandkids, but internally it’s a tough, identityless space. If we lose our way at this point of the threshold the danger is of sinking into the gloop. This is the place of deep pain and loss of an old identity. 

But, whilst the chrysalis may look inert, dead, sidelined, nothing happening, actually an awful lot is happening. A miracle is taking place. The gloop is a lake of creativity. It just doesn’t feel that way.  What is happening is that the old identity is breaking down and falling away. I am no longer that caterpillar. I no longer just consume and succeed. I am not that CEO, that mum, that salary, that recognition in the market place of life. But I am also not nothing. As I wrote in the previous article, the old self dies off, disintegrates into this gloopy mess that is now full of imaginal cells.

These cells are the truth of you. What you came into the world with.  It takes the death of our constructed identity, the letting go of it, to begin to experience the fact that you are not nothing, but in fact a deeper you waiting to be reborn. You have all these imaginal cells, these essential parts of you, that are wanting to reinvent who you are (and maybe, but not necessarily, what you do). A threshold always asks us, ‘what stays and what goes?’.  What stays are the imaginal cells of our uniqueness waiting to be born into something. What goes is the redundant parts of our old identity from that first half of life identity project.

There comes a point in the chrysalis where you simply have to let go of who you thought you were, how you defined yourself to make it in the world and to trust that there is a Life beneath that old life that has always been there, patiently waiting to deliver you into the person that you are becoming.

There is a beautiful song, written for the Cirque De Soleil that describes the journey within the chrysalis,

            Let me fall, let me climb

            There’s a moment when fear and dream must collide.

            Someone I am is waiting for courage

            The one I want

            The one I will become will catch me[1]

This isn’t a new call, a modern psychology call, it’s timeless in its wisdom.  It is this experience that the spiritual sages of the past described in terms of discovering that underneath the current situations, underneath the terror of loss of identity, is Love, a Living Presence, a Rock, a Fortress. The call was not to use these ideas or experiences (love, presence, rock, fortress) to build around your life as an extra layer of identity scaffolding, but to build a life on these truths.  It is from this place alone that the butterfly is born, from deep within your own pre-existing imagination that has been waiting for you all along.

Where to start? Can I encourage you to listen to David Whyte recite and explain his wonderful poem Start Close In

Image reproduced with thanks to @blogman

[1] From Cirque De Soleil  written by Benoit Jutras & James Carcaran