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Something about self awareness, the understanding that I am uniquely me, that my molecules are programmed like no other person, that my thoughts are mine alone. Self aware, I come to the grim truth that I am trapped inside my own head. My siblings and cohorts, anybody, everyone; we can rub shoulders, make eye contact and tell our story but it all comes out in words and phrases that require interpretation. We make sense from story by measuring it against our own story, the one we experienced first hand, that does not need words. I can write a book about the way I feel when I smell cherry blossoms and when someone betrays my trust but all you get are words. Language is a driving force in our evolution but it has limitations. Words can not express completely, exactly how I feel or the way I perceive a late summer sunset on Lake Michigan. We can come close but in the end it’s as much about the listener as the teller. I glean as much as possible from your words but then you are trapped within your mind as surely as I am trapped inside of mine. 

Whether or not you think about or even sense that level of isolation; it exists. I believe we have evolved mind sets that help us ease the anxiety that mars self awareness. That’s how evolution works. For some of my friends, this would be the segue to God, religion and our need to defuse that fear but I rode that goat as long and as far as I could. It’s another human construct, an extrapolation of identity. Abraham Maslow was a 20th Century Psychologist who framed what is universally accepted in his, ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. He surmised that in order to address higher level needs, fundamental needs must be satisfied first. First are biological needs, air, then security needs, safety, and then to belonging. Humans are social, always have been. We can’t survive as a species living independently. From the family unit to the clan, to tribe and nation, we band together. Our survival is intrinsically tethered to the need to belong, to be loved, appreciated and valued. 

Once met, Maslow says we can recognize the need for esteem and then self actualization but I’m hung up on the belonging. I can be safe and you can be secure but there is no ‘We’ until we identify with each other. There’s no way to feel good about the self until our peers approve. It’s how we fit into our culture. It’s the niche we carve out, or has been reserved for us where we are accepted and valued. We Belong there. Inclusion provides enough commonality that we recognize each other, but we still sniff buts to be sure and mark our territory. ‘Hey, it’s just me and you know I’m alright.’ That is at the bottom of all identity. Sometimes I struggle with identity, wanting to know more about what I am, who I am and what that all means.

I have Cajun friends from the Gulf Coast who know their pedigree and legacy back 14-15 generations. It’s a tight, well defined identity that leaves no doubt about who belongs and who doesn’t. Language, religion, custom, music, cuisine and tradition, they are an uncommon people. I love their culture but it belongs to them; all I can do is look in from the outside and share what they are willing to share. I love them but have no desire to be one of them. To be steeped in that legacy would consume me and I’m not ready to hang on one hook forever. Likewise Native Americans; I have wonderful friends who cling to their aboriginal link, still moving to the rhythm of the drum, honoring the Mystery and the medicine wheel. I lean on them to learn more, to appreciate their connection to Mother Earth but I would not be Native American, for the same reason I don’t want to be Cajun. I could turn to some ideology, some ‘Ism’ to access the ‘We’ but they are not the means to an end as they would suggest, at the end of the day the ideology becomes the end.

Still I feel the tug of a distant, long removed clan or tribe pulling at my need to belong. It comes at me through my feelings which I have little or no control over and to some extent through logic and reason. I like to believe I have the handle on logic and reason but I must challenge my beliefs as much as the things I reject. You have to do that or become one of the sheeple with noses tucked under the next sheep's tail. I realize the way I feel about logic and reason is more powerful than reason itself. Still the question begs, who am I? My pedigree branches off in all directions, so much so that I can’t find a common source. There are British and Celtic threads in the fabric and rumor of some French but looking back over ten generations it leaves a thousand possibilities. 

Molly O’Day was Orange Irish, my great grandmother; loyal to the Crown but Irish none the less. In the family she is remembered as the most fractious, quarrelsome, bat-tempered woman on earth. She singlehandedly drove my grandparents to divorce, leaving my father to be raised by foster parents. I’d say she had at least a distant, removed effect on me and my journey. On my mother’s side, the name Porter is English as can be. Several Porters’ were Presbyterian preachers from New England, Harvard no less. By the time Porter genes got down to her, my mother was the second child of seven, to a ne’er do well rounder and his sickly wife Lottie Wood, just as English. The Stevens’ were Welsh coal miners, by way of Canada in the early 1800’s, matriculated down to Cincinnati, OH, to central Iowa and finally to southwestern Missouri. For the most part they were farmers and store keepers. 

So, how am I obliged to a tradition of sniffing butts and marking territory ? My logical side doesn’t care because that was then and this is now, still the need to belong is waiting for an answer. I don’t have one but when I do it will be about half breeds and nonconformists. Freedom from prejudices of a dead and gone generation is empowering. What has funneled down to me is not the legacy of religion or politics, music or food; I just know that you be there for family; be the push or the pull, the lift up or the sit down they need, when they need. You do the same for your outlaw relations, the ones who slipped in the back door. They’re not like blood, with blood you take what you get. You get to choose your outlaws. I am a mutt, my pedigree doesn’t go anywhere and the tradition that resonates with me is about; breathe in, breathe out, move on. ‘Jimmy Buffett’. Evidently I'm doing alright with identity and the rest of my hierarchy, I've been playing with around here at the top for some time.