CLPW

The Self

Identifying one’s true self. The greatest and most

important adventure of our lives is discovering who we
really are. Yet, so many of us walk around either not
really knowing or listening to an awful inner critic that
gives us all the wrong ideas about ourselves. We
mistakenly think of self-understanding as self-
indulgence, and we carry on without asking the most
important question we’ll ever ask: Who am I really? As
Mary Oliver put it, “what is it you plan to do with
your one wild and precious life?”
The Valley of Amazement
[Excerpt]
By Amy Tan
(USA)
Amy Tan
At the age of eight, I was determined to be true to
My Self. Of course, that made it essential to know
what My Self consisted of. My manifesto began
the day I had discovered I had once possessed an
extra finger in each hand, twins to my pinkies. My
grandmother had recommended that the surplus
be amputated before leaving the hospital, lest
people think there was a familial tendency
towards giving birth octopuses.
Mother and Father were Freethinkers, whose
opinion were based on reason, logic, deduction,
and their own opinions. Mother, who disagreed
with any advice my grandmother had to give said:
“Should the extra fingers be removed enable her
to wear gloves from a dry goods store?” they took
me home with all my fingers in place. But then an
old family friend of my father’s, Mr. Maubert, who
was also my piano teacher, to turn my unusual
hands into ordinary ones.
He was a former concert pianist, who, early in his
promising career, lost his right arm during the
siege of Paris by the Prussians. “There are only a
few piano compositions for one hand,” he said to
my parents, “none for six fingers. If you intend for
her to have musical training, it would be a pity if
she had to take up the tambourine due to lack of
suitable instruments.” Mr. Maubert was the one
who proudly informed me when I was eight that
he had influenced the decision.
Few can understand the shock of a little girl
that part of her was considered as
undesirable and thus needed to be
completely removed. It made me tearful that
people can change part of me, without my
knowledge and permission. And thus began
my quest to know which of my many
attributes I needed to protect, the whole of
which I named scientifically “My Pure Self-
Being”.
In the beginning, the complete list comprised my
preferences and dislikes, my strong feelings for
animals, my animosity towards anyone who
laughed at me, my aversion to stickiness, and
several more things I have forgotten. I also
collected secrets about myself, mostly what had
wounded my heart, and the very fact that they
needed to be kept private was proof of My Pure
Self-Being.
I later added to my list my intelligence, opinions of
others, fears and revulsions, and certain nagging
discomforts, which I later knew as worries. A few years
later, after I stained my undergarments, Mother
explained to me “the biology that led to your
existence” – the gist of which was my beginning as an
egg slipping down the fallopian tube. She made it spud
as if I had a mindless blob and that upon entry into the
world I took on personality shaped through my parent’s
guidance.
Becoming your true self goes beyond the
science of being conceived and the
concept of finding yourself may sound
like an inherently self-centered goal, but
it is actually an unselfish process that is at
the root of everything we do in life.
In order to be the most valuable person to the
world around us, the best and true versions of
own selves, we have to first know who we are,
what we value and, in effect, what we have to
offer. This personal journey is one every individual
will benefit from taking. It is a process that
involves breaking down – shedding layers that do
not serve us in our lives and don’t reflect who we
really are.
Yet, it also involves a tremendous act of building
up – recognizing who we want to be and
passionately going about fulfilling our unique
destiny – whatever that may be. It’s a matter of
recognizing our personal power, yet being open
and vulnerable to our experiences. It isn’t
something to fear or to avoid, berating ourselves
along the way, but rather something to seek out
with the curiosity and compassion we would have
toward a fascinating new friend.

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The Self

Identifying one’s true self. The greatest and most

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