What character are you playing today? Who are you in the middle of your story? Let’s stop and reflect on your internal growth as you navigate the next chapter of your life this year.

I’ve been reflecting on identity issues lately, and it’s been simultaneously fascinating and frustrating - maybe you can relate?

This is the critical question I’ve been asking myself: “where is my True Self, and how does my True Self inhabit and express?”

The question is ultimately unsolvable, and I’m caught on the concept of ‘permanent essence’ vs ‘impermanent traits’.

Does your Self have a centre?

In truth, I still don’t know the location or precise texture of my True Self, and I’m deeply unconvinced by positions which point towards my inner child or my archetypal golden shadow or any nameable psychic structure.

Even the spiritual philosophies fall flat because we need both soul and ego and the spaces in-between; and the soul-life nonetheless stretches into dissolution eventually, given enough time.

This is what I know: Your identity unfolds over your lifetime, and there are many subpersonalities and parts within your psyche. You are no more your true self at age five or age fifty-five.

Singularity is insufficient; we are clearly multiple.

The voice of your soul, the depths of your character, the many shades of selfhood which mark your trajectory… these all matter, and it’s relatively easy to drop superficial selves with sustained inner work, but I find that my essence still escapes language and categorisation.

There are aspects of identity which appear immutable and permanent, but the boundaries are softly blurred at the edges. I keep finding myself falling through the centre of the mirror and vanishing into the periphery.

Every time I gaze inwards: the centre becomes circumference, and my individuality dissolves into multiplicity.

Jordan