Identity: Who Am I?
On May 8th, 1978, in a sterile hospital room on Ft. Huachuca, AZ, I entered the world. My parents decided to name me after my grandfather, Ronald and along with the name came expectations of who I would be. When I was born, I had a hernia that distended my groin area and a noticeable heart murmur. The doctors said that I was a sickly boy, maybe I wouldn’t make it. I never really had much of a chance for sports and as a small child I wondered. . . am I weak?
Then I grew, and as a boy discovered that sometimes enlisted army pay wasn’t enough to feed a family of five. My father got paid on the first of the month but sometimes by the end of the month there wasn’t enough money or food in the house. I wondered . . . am I poor?
When I was in ninth grade my father went away to Korea and I kept finding myself in the back of a cop car. On one occasion my mom was given the alternative to either pay a fine or send me to the scared straight program. I guess you already know based on our financial situation what choice she made. The prisoners threatened to hurt me if they had a chance. They told me that if I didn’t change my ways, I would end up just like them. I wondered . . .am I bad?
And one by one, little by little I began to collect the labels that would define and inform who I was supposed to be.
. . . but what if it was different? What if instead of allowing our circumstance and surroundings to define who we are, we had the power to write our own narrative? What if, instead of passively accepting what life brings us, we get to choose what we bring to life? Most people never truly discover who they are because they are not willing to put in the work that self-discovery requires. They choose a life of easy consumer entertainment and never reach their full potential but what if it were different? To find out how, read on.
