stephanie yang

a few years ago…ok, well, maybe a few more than 10…i was going through a break up that made me question, probably for the first real time, “who am i?” i began searching…peeling back the layers of masks i had plastered on over the years, hoping to find some sort of constant. something true. i was looking for myself. my self. what i found, however, were the words of thich nhat hanh, that there is no such thing as a “self” or the “i”.

at first, these words deeply challenged me.

since then, i have struggled with this dharma, struggled with this idea that “i” do not exist…so i kept searching deeper and excavating wider…expecting to figure out who i really was…to prove this statement wrong. there had got to be a stable core somewhere inside this swirling existence, right? i pictured saturn. i believed i was caught up in the sand and debris of the orbiting rings and if i could sift through it all hard enough, i would end up facing the planet at the center, my truth.

since then, i have wandered through more relationships, numerous break ups and a few lasting connections…i have gone to film school, stepped off a “promising” career path, moved (back) to LA and reframed the ways i choose to live life…i have also dedicated myself to several years of therapy, body work, spiritual journeys…plumbing my hidden recesses for the key to figuring out “me”.

when something that felt like a glimmer of truth was found, i would speak it out loud and try it on for size. sometimes it would fit, other times, just almost, and still other times, these items stared back at me like outdated jeans, two sizes too big. i began to start piling up the pieces that fit in a box, hoping that i could put them all together like a puzzle one day that would be a picture of me. the constant me. the central planet that held all the other pieces together.

over the years, the box actually got quite big. i felt like i was doing spiritual and psychological archeology…finding artifacts and treasures that together, told the full story. sitting with this box, i hoped it could cast a holographic image of who and what i was…soon, given the pieces in the box, i began to speak of myself as simply a contradiction. the pieces fit, sure, but they didn’t necessarily make sense, together. so this must be then, who i am? right?

this is the the closest i’ve gotten to identifying a static core, which is to say that i am both/and: a contradiction of desires, identities, beliefs. i traced this all back to my lived experience as a mixed-race, hapa person…that all my multiplicity was rooted in that. i began to believe, especially in this past year and a half, that i knew who i was.

then, today. something happened…i noticed that a number of the things in the box no longer fit. at all. even in all their contradictions…and if they no longer fit, what does this mean – especially as so much of my identity is built around these things?

is it because my perspective, circumstances and life experiences have changed so dramatically in the past 6 months? …if that is in fact the case, then there can be no static, constant “me”. my exterior is always shifting, which in turn, moves around the glass in the kaleidoscope…casting each time a new pattern as each of the pieces of glass shift and move and catch the light of a cycling sun.

i get it. today, i finally understand what thich nhat hanh was so simply telling me all those years ago: there is no “i”. to believe that there is, is to hold on to something static whose existence dissolves away as time passes. nothing is static, permanent, forever…especially not me. as my context shifts, so does my desire. so do my hopes. so does the size and shape of my goldilock’s perfect bed. change is inevitable so all i have is right here, right now. right?

i know that what i am writing about is the stuff that buddhism 101 is made up of, and yet, i haven’t understood it in my body until now. it is one thing to hold dharma in my mind…it is another thing altogether to feel it move through my body….now, it is the letting go of these pieces that feels so hard.

as my truths evolve – year by year, day by day, minute by minute – i am arriving at the understanding that everything truly is going to be ok. without judgement, i am allowing these shifted items in…trusting in the present, trusting the larger truth of how change works. trusting that i can let go of who i think i am, who i want others to think i am…and simply enjoy the colors and patterns the kaleidoscope creates as each piece falls, catches light, enters in and moves on through…