What we are Used to

"We prefer to live on other people's ideas. It's what we are used to." -Razumihin, Crime and Punishment

"What denomination are you?" .... "I don't really know yet."
"What college are you going to?" .... "That depends on a lot of things."
"What are you going to be?" .... "That's an excellent question."
"What political party do you affiliate with?" .... "A little of all of them?"

I guess these past few months have been anything but ordinary for me. I've realized that I don't know all the truths. The past few months have been anything but blind and they have been anything but normal. I feel like I've seen so much. I've changed my views and I've lifted my personal presuppositions from my faith. I guess I've learned to value rawness, humanness, and truth in these past few months. I've learned to value the search for those things as much as I value their solution.

I've seen that the beautiful lessons are learned just as much in the search as they are in the solution.

To be honest, I think my entire life - and most of all our lives - have been a panicked search for identity. How am I going to make myself matter? What do I believe in contrast to what other people believe? How should I act around them? Should it bother me if they don't like me? Do I even like me? Is something wrong just because a large number of people are screeching that it's wrong? Is something right under the same conditions?

Some days I feel like we're so vulnerable and gullible. We live on other people's ideas. And I get so frustrated when I realize that nearly the entire world does that. Somebody comes up with something in their own panicked search for identity, and other people see it their panicked search, and then all the panicked people grasp onto it until something shinier pops up. That's how the life-cycle works, son.

I read Crime and Punishment last December, and I absolutely fell in love with that book. It epitomizes so much of our humanity. I took a pen and wrote down, in my faded purple notebook, some of the most profound quotes of the story. Every now and then I go back and reread them. I love reading from an author that understands, perfectly, the bittersweetness of the human search for identity. Crime and Punishment was about the search for God, and the search for identity, and the search for truth.

I have come to value searching immensely. Searching has a negative stigma attached to it. If you don't have the parameters of your religion, wallet, education, and private life neatly defined, then you must be searching, and that must be bad. You don't have everything figured out. You're a drifter. You're a hippie. You need to grow up. Our search for identity is often rushed along by society. And that's not okay. A thorough search is so important. And if you don't have all your own questions answered?

No one really does.

What are you used to? Are you used to rushing the searching process? Are you used to deciding on who you are before God has shown you who He created you to be? Are you used to being afraid because you can't answer your own questions? Are you used to living on other people's ideas because you've been told to discard your own?

The point of this post is not to discourage guidance in a search for identity, and it is not to ridicule having answers. Answers are beautiful. I've found a few of those every now and then. That's why the search for them is immensely important. The solution can't be reached without the method. Don't rush it. Don't be scared to admit it. Search and search wholeheartedly. Think for yourself. Don't be afraid to question things. Don't be afraid to question everything. Truth has this nifty habit of rising to the surface.

Don't be afraid to sift through the silt of everything you've ever heard. The nuggets of truth will survive. Search, my friends, and search on. Don't be afraid to admit that you don't have it all figured out. We live on other people's ideas, because that's what we are used to. But think for yourself. Allow yourself to think and allow yourself to question and allow yourself to admit when you don't have an answer.

Your identity is not defined by somebody else's. Please don't be scared to embrace that.

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