When it comes to the pertinent issue of personal growth and sustainable success, this question is poignant as it is pregnant.
When an interview panel asks you this question, they are not interested in the plethora of information already detailed on your CV which every panel member already has before them. They are simply asking about the REAL you that powers whatever value proposition you are being interviewed for. You cannot perform what you cannot become. The WHO does the WHAT.The identity question is not just about your name. Your identity is the summation of who you have become, either by aligning with your Maker’s original label or by what you have allowed life experiences, background or other people totally unrelated to your destiny to call you. What we lack in recognition of who we really are, we try to compensate for in our response that speaks about our name and academic or work credentials.
There is an interesting story in the Holy Bible about Jacob when was returning home 20 years after fleeing the consequence of a bad label and a brother who was determined to kill him and for which reason he left town when he did. After putting in place a strategy to meet and reconcile with his brother, he sent his party ahead and stayed alone to meditate and pray. In his “alone” moment, he saw an angel and went into an all-night wrestling match with the angel. In the focus-resetting night-long wrestling match between Jacob and the angel, the divine essence asked him a question, “What is your name?”.
Jacob’s struggle was the tenuous tension between the albatross of a label and its consequences, and an inner urge to be free from it. Jacob’s strategy for meeting Esau was the performance-driven palliative strategy that was akin to applying Band Aid plaster on a gangrenous wound. He arranged a plethora of gifts to placate the 20-year wrath of a vengeance-driven sibling. Nonetheless, deep down within him, he knew that he needed more than a mere escapist gesture to escape what he thought was his nemesis. He knew that only God’s hand on him could save him.
Did the Omniscient God not know Jacob’s name? Why ask him? It was necessary for Jacob to have the moment of epiphany that would open his eyes to see that his perception of his identity as conferred by his family, environment and experiences was at the root of the yoke of his overdrive performance and his escape from the inner heaviness that dogged his person. Nothing on earth is as exhausting as functioning out of sync with your real SELF. It is the frustration and depression highway, sometimes paved with gold and silver (Jacob had all the material trappings of success) but leading surely to no good end. Nothing can be more depressing than the void a man feels when everyone thinks that he is a success but within him, he feels unfulfilled. Jacob’s answer rang with frustration a man feels when he knows he has come to his wit’s end. “Jacob,” he answered feebly.
By the time it was over, the angel touched his thigh, thus dislocating the strength and drive (thigh) of the old identity. He greeted a new day with a new name conferred on him by the One who made and knew Him. He was christened Israel, his real identity as a PRINCE with God as opposed to SUPPLANTER with men.
Whose spectacles are you wearing? Through whose lenses do you view yourself? What is fueling your current drive to impress people who don’t even care if you dropped dead right now? You probably need a change of glasses.
But you cannot know the identity of anything until you know who the Maker is. Brand management is nothing but the capacity to connect the identity of a product with function or performance in order to produce an experience that influences market perception and response. So, true identity is found in the SOURCE. You don’t really know WHO you are until you know WHOSE you are!
Let’s take an excursion to the beginning. When God wanted to create botanical life as well as animal life, He did not say, “Let there be…”, He simply said, “Let the earth bring forth…”, thus connecting the origin and the source of sustenance of every plant and mammal to the earth. Plants are irrevocably committed to the earth. The human dimension made from the earth is sustained by what the earth produces.
To produce aquatic life, God spoke to the waters, instructing them to “bring forth…”. From then on fish, and other aquatic animals separate from water at their own risk.
When it was time to create Man, God spoke to HIMSELF. “Let us make man in OUR own IMAGE, after OUR LIKENESS…
If the earth is the life-essence of plants, animals and the human side of man and if the waters sustain marine and aquatic life, then God must be essence of the man in whose nostrils His breath is! The SOURCE powers the BEING and the being powers the doing in that order.
From God’s perspective, death is not the cessation of breath. It is the disconnect from SOURCE. Adam and Eve did not stop breathing the day they “died”. A pressing iron remains hot when plugged to a power source. Unplugged, it doesn’t lose heat immediately, but from that moment when it is starved of the connection to the current of electricity, it begins to cool down.
A cut tree appears to retain its luxuriant look for a few hours at the most, after which the leaves wither as the tree enters its drying and decay process, evidence of death.
Take fish out of water. It still jumps about for a while in a struggle to stay alive, but gradually begins to weaken as life goes out of it
The landscape of the earth is dotted with several walking dead people, zombies who strut the earth, some as nonentities and some as celebrities, conjoined in the identity of the dead, separated from their life essence but still strutting the earth in the camouflage of well-being.
So, how do you think that a life separated from your SOURCE can be compensated for by just good deeds, the huge bank account, the church and charity donations, the Prada shoes, another Gucci bag, the exotic holidays, the Lamborghini or any other luxury car, the endless parties and the accompanying orgies, all of which only leave you still distorted and dissatisfied even while the whole word celebrates your “success”?
If the accolades and the klieg lights were sufficient to provide fulfillment, how do you explain the horror and the hollow din of the emptiness that you feel about the stranger in you when you go to bed at night?
No man has to live or remain that way forever. You can live again.
That is why Christ came. To reconnect us to our REAL SOURCE. In Him all the riddles of existence are resolved, all dilemmas dissolved. This is the essence of His death and His resurrection. “As many as received Him, to them He gave power to be called the sons of God…”
Happy Easter and remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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