Identity and experience

I recently went scuba diving at the Barrier Reef – this was an amazing discovery for me to do something way outside my comfort zone.

One of the statements we use regularly at RedBalloon is “life is the sum of your experiences”, so when Kate my colleague shared the following quote with me, I thought I had to share it further:

“Who you think you are is not real, but a concoction of past events, desires and memories. This concoction has a life of its own. It motors through time and space experiencing only the things that it knows. A new experience isn’t really new; it’s just a slight twist on very familiar sensations. To open yourself to the unknown means cutting the ground from under your familiar actions and habits.” – Deepak Chopra.

Humans are a whole bunch of experiences – one after the other joined together to create who we think we are. We often identify ourselves based on these experiences. (If ever you’ve met someone who has flown in a jet fighter – it will come out in the conversation pretty quickly.)

What creates human connectedness is shared experiences. The sharing of the event together brings us somehow closer… and if those people are not actually part of that experience then it is the retelling of the story, the photos, video, mementos that make the experience even more vivid.

My experiences get much more vivid with each telling. Hence we create the notion of who we are based on what we have experienced. The trick of course is to not limit one’s self to only those things you would expect to do. Some of the greatest delight comes from achieving what you did not know yourself to be able to do. From education to raising money for a charity – the scope of experiences is endless.

I recently went scuba diving at the Barrier Reef – and for a girl who thinks sharks could even be living in backyard swimming pools, this was an amazing discovery for me to do something way outside my comfort zone. It made me realise that the only thing getting in my way… is me. My fears, concerns and worries slow me down in many aspects of my life.

“Pick any quality that holds charm for you, and if you follow it far enough, with commitment and passion, you will merge with the absolute. For at the end of the path, each quality disappears, swallowed up by being.”
– Deepak Chopra.

Sounds like a great idea to me.