Redefining the Self

How easy it is to forget yourself! Every day we are faced with the task of evaluating, reaffirming and justifying who we are to everyone with whom we interact. "So what classes do you take? What did you do this summer? Didn't you go to China? How's that Chinese thing going for ya? Are you in a fraternity? Are you from the South? Really?" People identify us by what we do outwardly, and if we lose track, sometimes we fall prey to these labels and internalize these identifications.

For this reason, I wanted my summer experience to be an escape. My friend told me about his job working at a fish cannery in Naknek, Alaska, the previous summer. No questions, no labels, no resumé drops and no pre-major advice--just work and sleep. I heard that no job was as mentally and physically demanding as the 18-hour-per-day power shifts at an Alaskan salmon cannery. I wanted to see if I could actually do it, to see if I was still human; I wanted to redefine myself without having to face the daily burdens of social life. Funny enough, I found this redefinition long before I actually arrived in Naknek. I found it in the car during my 3,000-mile solo trek to Seattle, Wash.

Don't worry, the moral to the story isn't, "I passed the vast stretches of openness and bucolic space, and I realized how totally amazing and awesome our great land is and how I am just a small chunk of the great American pie." That realization didn't happen.

What did happen, however, was the longest period of uninterrupted and cathartic self-reflection I have done in years. You know how sometimes when you're driving down the road, you realize that you've crossed traffic, turned onto your home street and parked your car, all without being conscious of it? You daydream; although you can perceive the dim outlines of cars and traffic lights, your vision is at the same time enveloped in a thin veil of imagination. Your attention is on your thoughts.

Multiply this phenomenon by 3,000 miles, five straight days, 14 hours per day and an endless expanse of highway. Needless to say, you get to thinking. And you think and think and think, and when you're not thinking, you're thinking about not thinking. To try to clear your mind of thoughts only causes more of them to pop into your head, and thus continues the vicious cycle.

It was a mixture of good and bad, I suppose. When left alone to its own devices the human mind focuses on the only thing it knows: memory. Along with the happy memories, I dwelt on the countless mistakes, missed opportunities, failed relationships and wasted time that had filled my previous year. I considered the degree to which people's perceptions of me controlled my own self-perceptions, and I considered how to reconcile these with the kind of person I truly wanted to be. Up until this point, it was the world around me, including my peers, that told me who I was. Even academia, the champion of self-knowledge and metaphysical truth, had taken me for a ride. The identity-theorist's lexicon--Cartesian dualism, Freudian hedonism, Platonic perfection--all complicated a lesson that I learned on my own, alone, in my Honda.

The "self" is what occupies your thoughts when no one else is there. What constitutes "you" is not the third-degree you get when discussing your major, your resumé and summer employment with your advisor. No matter how happy or how disturbing your thoughts might be, the thoughts you ponder outside of daily life and engagements constitute "you." "You" are the things that take importance after driving in peaceful isolation for 14 hours. Not even the music can deflect your thoughts, because even when you turn up the volume, your thoughts overshadow all.

Unfortunately, I only got a glimpse of the picturesque America found in Fodor's. I was busy thinking about what is important--issues that daily life had previously hidden from me. Sure, I didn't answer all the questions or achieve inner peace, but I got comfortable with my thoughts, my worries, my joys, my memory and me. Quite frankly, you don't have to go to Nepal and meditate with an ascetic Zen master to self-reflect. Nor do you have to wander the Gobi Desert for seven years to achieve understanding. The "self" is no further away than a Radiohead CD, a bottle of Coke, a full tank of gas and a working cruise control.