What I Have Learnt, What I am?
There comes a moment in life when one pauses and asks, what I am… and what truly is my identity?
Anil Kumar Sharma
There comes a moment in life when one pauses and asks, what I am and what truly is my identity. Is it the belief into which I was born, or the understanding that slowly unfolded within the walls of my home, shaped by the faith of my parents, or perhaps the learning I carried forward through education where ideas were refined, questioned and sometimes replaced. In the early part of life there is no choice. One simply inherits. Beliefs are not selected, they are received. They flow into us through family, through surroundings, through the silent influence of the society in which we grow. We begin to think of them as our own without ever realizing that they were gently placed into our hands long before we had the ability to question.
Then comes a phase when knowledge arrives. Education gives us language, logic and a certain confidence. Slowly and unknowingly one begins to feel like a protagonist, someone who understands, someone who can argue, someone who can even dismantle the beliefs of others. But a quiet question lingers beneath this confidence, what have I truly lived. What have I practised deeply enough to call my own. Often the beliefs we defend most strongly are not the ones we have experienced, but the ones we have inherited. They belong to our parents, to our upbringing, to the system and society that shaped us. They are important, no doubt, but are they truly ours.
If each layer of our identity has come from somewhere else, from birth, from conditioning, from the need to belong and survive, then why do we struggle so intensely to defend it. Why does it become a matter of conflict, sometimes even surpassing humanity itself. Perhaps because somewhere along the way we forget the difference between what we have been given and what we have realized. In this journey one truth begins to emerge gently but firmly, the only identity that is truly our own is humanity. Everything else, religion, caste, ideology, social positioning, is in some way borrowed. Valuable, yes. Worth respecting, certainly. But not worth losing our core for.
And yet if we look around today, despite having access to knowledge, communication and the ability to reason, we find ourselves more divided than ever. We argue, we compete, we try to prove that our way is better, our belief is purer, our identity is superior. It reminds me of those old advertisements we once watched where the claim was simple yet symbolic, my shirt is whiter than yours. A harmless line on the surface, but perhaps a deep reflection of how we continue to live, constantly comparing, constantly asserting, constantly trying to be better than the other. But in this silent race what are we really winning and what are we losing.
Why is it so difficult for us, as a human race, to simply coexist with dignity, with respect and with a sense of shared existence. Why must identity become a battleground when it could very well be a bridge. Maybe the answer lies not in rejecting what we have inherited, but in understanding it with humility, in not allowing it to harden into ego, in not letting it overshadow the simple universal truth that we all belong to the same human family. What if we chose consciously to live with less insistence and more acceptance, to let go of unnecessary comparisons, of silent competitions, of inherited rigidities, to place humanity at the forefront and allow everything else to follow in balance.
Perhaps then life would feel lighter, perhaps then conflicts would soften, perhaps then we would not need to defend so much because we would begin to understand more. The rest as always can be left to the Almighty to maintain the balance of this vast world. Our role may simply be to live with sincerity, to act with compassion and to accept with humility whatever unfolds. In the end what I have learnt and what I have lived brings me to a quiet realization, I am not merely what I was told to be, I am not only what I was taught to believe. I am at my core a human being, and perhaps that is the only identity worth truly living.
The whole world is one family.
Yeh sawal sirf ek jumla nahi, ek talash hai apne wajood ki.
Jab maine jahaan se poocha “main kya hoon,” to insaan ke siwa har cheez ne kaha, “tu insaan hai.”
Phir maine “insaan” ko samajhne ki koshish ki… jaise woh ek kirdaar ho, jo apni pehchaan khud banata bhi hai aur kabhi udhaar bhi leta hai.
Usne mazhab bhi liya, riwayat bhi li, aur unhein apni asliyat samajh baitha.
Magar andar kahin ek khamosh sawal raha—kya yeh sab meri apni pehchaan hai, ya sirf woh libaas hai jo maine pehna hai.
(Straight Talk Communications Exclusive)
