Written/Photography by Mark Adam Crow
Self identification is the prime illusion. Who are you? When asked this question most people will respond by saying their name, sometimes followed by a title, or sometimes just a title. I am Sam, Sam I am. I am the President of (whatever) incorporated. I am a doctor. I am Cindy, Larry's wife. Maybe people will say something like I'm a home owner, or I'm a Christian. Yet, are any of these things who one rally is? Or, are they just a series of labels and circumstances? In ten years, twenty years, a hundred years, if I asked the same question, would the answer still be the same? Would, or could, it have changed due to a series of events, occurring through the passage of time? If all of these labels and circumstances were to be stripped away, and again I ask the question, what then would the answer be? Could there even be an answer without a name or outside association?
And so I ask myself, who am I? My truest answer would have to be that I do not know, I only know that I am. I am now, and I was before. Who? I do not really know. Will I be after? I do not know. I only know that I am and that I was. This much is surely absolute, or is it? I say that I was, because I remember, but memories too, are they not also circumstantial? Is it not true that even memories fade away with time? The only truth is that I am now. For as long as I am, then now is. Without I, there is no now, and without now, there is no I. Within my perception, this is the only true absolute. This is the true identity of self. I am now.