The other day my eight-year-old son, Matt, approached me in the kitchen. “Mom, I just realized something that’s freaking me out,” he said with a slightly furrowed brow.
I was intrigued. “Oh yeah? What did you just realize?” His eyes widened. “I’m alive!” he announced. “I mean, I’m living. It’s so freaky!”
I smiled, remembering my own such discovery at a similar age. “I know. You go along for years, being alive but not noticing. Then all of a sudden you notice. It is pretty weird.”
Matt nodded, a dreamy look on his face. “And pretty cool.”
Ah, the dawning of self-consciousness. As a child I would sometimes sit alone in my room, gripped by the simple wonder of being. I’m me, I would repeat to myself. I’m me. In my mind, the words echoed through a wide, airy hallway with no beginning and no end. Asks Annie Dillard,“Who could ever tire of this heart-stopping transition, of this breakthrough shift between seeing and knowing you see, between being and knowing you be?”
I’ve never tired of it. Even at thirty-seven I still get a strange thrill whenever I catch myself existing, like Matt recently did. And before long he will know, as I do, that such awareness is only the beginning of the fun. As human beings, we don’t only catch ourselves existing from time to time. We also catch ourselves evolving.
Of course, our awareness of internal change is intermittent,just like our awareness of our own breath—and it’s just as surprising, and miraculous. We go along day by day,interacting with people and places and things, oblivious to our slow transformation. Then we sit down to write about our experiences, or read about someone else’s, and all of a sudden certain pieces of those days, months, and years coalesce and crystallize into understanding. In fluid motion we see our selves emerge, like leaves unfurling in time-lapse photography. After all, writes Madeline L’Engle, “A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel. … A self is always becoming.”
This issue of Segullah, which features participants in our annual personal essay and poetry contests, is rich with the dynamics of becoming. Several pieces detail the influence of family life. Some describe the development of faith. Others address the impact of race and culture. Each story has a different backdrop, from the complexities of international adoption or missionary work to the everyday quirks of conscience. But each is essentially an exploration of identity: Who am I becoming, and how?
The authors answer in voices both unique and united. How are we becoming? In relationships, whether earthly or heavenly, informal or intimate. In moments, both simple and dramatic. Through choices, carefully weighed or hastily made. Through the passage of universal time and individual circumstance. There are as many pathways as there are people.
But in a sense, each path leads to the same destination.Who are we becoming, in this very moment, whether or not we even notice? Ourselves.
As Matt would say, pretty freaky, pretty cool.
Kathryn Soper is editor-in-chief of Segullah. She recently
published a memoir titled The Year My Son and
I Were Born.
