The thought came from nowhere, and I couldn’t let go of it. I was surprised by it too.
Who am I without my history? When I stop identifying myself with what I’ve been told I am — what I’m good at, what I have done and not done, what I have and what I don’t have.
The thought surfaced again while watching the news: the forest fires outside Bordeaux, the house fires across Sweden and Norway. Homes gone, and with them, the physical evidence of people’s memories — erased in seconds.
The stories we edit
What stories do we keep telling ourselves, edited over time?
When I ask people who shared the same memories as me how they remember it, I almost always find a discrepancy between my picture and theirs. Two people, one event, two different histories. Which makes me wonder whether there was ever a fixed history to begin with, or only this ongoing act of construction — happening again, differently, each time it’s told.
And then there’s the other side of it: when we travel, move to a new place, start a new job, we often discover sides of ourselves we didn’t know were there. New context, new self. Or maybe not new — just previously unused.
So the question returns. Am I my history? Am I a result of it? Do I let it steer the decisions I make, the behavior I have — the parts I liked and the parts I didn’t?
Who am I, then?
Me. The energy I wake up with every morning — how do I use it? How do I spend my time, which is to say my life? How do I choose to spend my money, which is to say also part of my energy?
Am I someone without my history? Of course I am. But who?
It’s a hard question to sit with — to question yourself, your being, this directly. What if I started from a blank page right now? Changed my name, my place, my work. No family. Incognito, somewhere new, telling no one about my past. Forgetting it. Just here, now.
And actually — that’s possible every moment. To carve out who I am, the way my friend Lena Kriström works with a piece of stone: finding the form that already lives inside it. Or a block of ice — shaped here and now, later changing, eventually granulating or melting into something else entirely.
What culture does to us
Culture gets defined many ways — language, products, societal norms, ethical takes, etc. So what is truly me, and what was put there?
These questions aren’t meant to be answered neatly. They’re meant to help sort things out, to move toward the core of who we are — with and without our history.
What’s the core? Who am I?
I’d genuinely like to hear your thoughts — who are you, with or without your history?
Enjoy your days ahead, until we meet next time.
Love and hugs,
/Cathrin
