During a recent emotional Benchly family moment in the Benchly family kitchen, Papa Benchly gave me some advice that he had heard from a famous philosopher, which I’ll try to paraphrase here: “there are two questions people ask in their lives: 1) Where am I going? and 2) who’s going with me? And most people try to answer these questions in the wrong order.”
The philosopher’s point is that many people forget to identify themselves because they’re too busy searching for love. And when they find that love but have no idea who they are, they’re essentially not ready for the love. They’re not ready because the changes they experience when they ultimately find themselves invariably take them in a different direction than their loved one. And so they grow apart from their loved one in spite of their love.
One could argue that it’s for this very same reason that most high-school relationships don’t make it off the life-long-commitment ground. I, for one, can only think of two high-school-sweetheart couples lucky enough to have evolved in the same direction. I’m sure you’d be hard pressed to come up with three.
The lesson learned here is so simple it could be a bumper sticker: find yourself before your love. And yet, I’m sure you’ll all agree, it’s not that simple at all. I’d go so far as to say that for the first ~10 years of my dating life, it was borderline impossible.
The last few weeks have allowed me the opportunity to consider what Papa Benchly said and how I could apply it to my life. I’ve lived enough life at this point to understand that we’re all constantly evolving and that what I consider the norm today could be outdated, closed-minded, and/or illogical twenty years from now. In other words, where I’m going could change. It’s for this reason that I think the philosopher’s point would have been better expressed with different questions: Who am I? And who loves me?
As much as the world around us evolves, and as much as we constantly redefine what we want out of life, what makes up who we are (our core) never drastically changes. (Even when we experience a traumatic life event, our core doesn’t change; it may be clouded/well-hidden by the event, but it’s still there.) So once we figure out who we are, I think it’s possible to completely understand who we’re capable of loving.
With this in mind, and contrary to what some may think, I feel fairly confident in my understanding of who I am and, to a less-important extent, where I’m going. In fact, I’m so confident in who I am and where I’m going at this point in my life, that I’m not afraid to stop and sit down around town from time to time to absorb the life I’m living on my journey, for even when I’m sitting, I feel as though I can still see my destination on the horizon.
The only question that remains now, and one that I’ve begun to seriously reconsider is, who am I capable of loving? There’s no guarantee in this life that I’ll ever find an answer to that question and yet, I still have hope. That’s just who I am.
Benchly'sword 
I think your next post should tell us who you are and where you’re going. I mean you kind of leave us hanging there. Plus, if you’re so sure about it then it shouldn’t be a problem to commit it to record.And for the record, I’m sorry to hear about your break up. I’m sorry, not because life includes sadness, but because it’s just so dang hard to walk out the other side of a relationship — even if you do grow and become a better person in the process.
I think you need to define a core…cores can change. A philospher believes that nothing is ever a constant so it’s impossible “to step in the same river twice”, so how can our core be a permanent unchanged “thing”?
The core I’m talking about is what makes up your personality, your values, your goals, your thoughts. It’s what you want out of life. It’s what you want out of yourself. It’s what you want out of others. Etc. Etc.And I never said a core was a permanent, unchanged thing. I said that it never drastically changed. Big difference. And something I still believe to be true regardless of what philosophers think.
This is a topic that has me thinking everyday…thinking and evolving. At 31 I feel younger, more free and more like “myself” than I ever have before. My own ongoing self esteem issues continue to be a work in progress but I know deep down I’m more confident and self assured than ever before. I have no idea where I’m going. I have less of an idea who I will be going with. But I am learning how to be okay with that as I get more comfortable with who I am…and I believe the rest falls into place. So I want to leave you with a quote from a modern day philopher…words I know you have heard before (but I just want to be sure you listened)…”But Oh how I loved everybody elseWhen I finally got to talk so much about myself.”
A great quote indeed. And I listened so much I’ve been talking about myself once a week down any course that fits within a fifty-minute hour. =)I’m glad you’re more comfortable with who you are, and have found more confidence. Lord knows you have every reason to be confident.
i especially like picture #5.