WHO AM I?

Who am I?  I have been thinking about this the last few days.  I have had fifty-five years to get to know me.  I know I am known as Bill, but that is just a tag.  I know I come from a family named Clark and a family named Hill.  That is an important point it seems.

Interacting with these two great families have surely had an impact on who I am.  I know that my grandparents have had an effect on shaping me and that the two people who came from these families and were my parents had a big impact on who I am.

Then there is the matter of my siblings.  Now we all know that siblings do not always give a positive outlook on life depending upon ages and circumstances.  All in all though, I think I have been pretty lucky having the siblings that I have.

So why does this question of who I am linger in my mind?  When it comes down to it, there are times when I do not know how I will react to situations.  As a matter of fact there are times that I really surprise myself in the manner in which I react.

When I was young I had a terrible temper.  As I grew older I kept working on my temper but it is still there and comes out at times in very bad ways.  Then again there are times when something happens where I would ordinarily lose my temper and I reacted in a calm manner.

My grandfather once had me record some of his stories of his life.  He told me from the start that I shouldn't expect to know everything about him.  There were things he would not tell anyone about his life.  That is just the way things are.  We keep a huge part of ourselves hidden from the world outside our minds.

Perhaps we hide things about ourselves from ourselves.  Things that get tucked away in our memory and are buried never to see the light of day again.  We keep things from ourselves, which keep us from fully knowing ourselves.  I think that is what I have done over the years.  I hide from myself just as much as I hide from others.

Maybe it is a blessing that I don't fully comprehend who I am.  There is a chance I may not like myself very much if I truly knew who I am.

Perhaps people do know who they are.  I am sure that there are a lot of people who do feel they know who they are.  That is good.  I think the world would be a beter place if there were more of those people than people like me.

Fifty five years of living with myself and I don't understand who I am, I don't know who I am, and as I grow older I am not sure I want to know who I am.  Maybe it is best that way.