"Who are you? Who have you become?" — Questions that have been haunting me lately. Not from anyone else asking, but from myself. I've gone through a few tough months and the new life as a dad has also not left much time to take care of myself.
There was a time when I would have answered these questions without hesitation. I knew exactly who I was, what I stood for, what drove me to push hard every single day. Knowing myself well was something I used to be proud of. It was my foundation, the solid ground beneath my feet.
But somewhere in the past few years, I lost that certainty. It feels like I lost my identity.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened. Maybe it was gradual, or maybe it was sudden. I had a feeling that things were changing, but I just didn't notice the full damage that was done. I found myself lost, disconnected from the person I once knew so well.
A lot had changed.
I went quieter. In conversations — online and offline; even in my own writing. How could I speak up when I wasn't confident about what I actually stood for? Every opinion felt borrowed, I was just rephrasing what I had heard somewhere. Which made every stance feel shaky.
Being active on social media became particularly hard. I used to share my thoughts freely, but I've become much quieter there too, actually, it's been radio silence for a while.
I tried to get back, but it's difficult when you feel like just another voice drowning in all the noise out there. Without knowing what you stand for, what's the point of adding to the chaos?
Another thing that got harder is making decisions. Big ones that kept me awake at night — should I stay in this job? Should I even stay in this country? But also the small, everyday ones. What do I feel like having for lunch? What book to read next. I found myself struggling to find motivation to actually get work done. Without that internal compass, nothing felt like the right decision. I didn't even feel like I had the right to make my own decisions.
And I am even doubting the decisions I made in the past. For someone, whose biggest fear is to die with regrets, this is tough.
A few weeks ago, I started to realize that I needed to figure this out.
During my running session, in the shower or in the evening when I would write what I call a mind dump, my mind would wander to the thoughts about who I had become. How I've become this person I am now and if I wanted to stay like that.
Every night, I'd write down the thoughts that had surfaced during the day. Raw, unfiltered, sometimes contradictory. Pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness writing.
And the repeating theme in these mind dumps pushed me towards setting some time aside to actually figure out who I was.
I started with answering some key questions:
- What interests me — genuinely interests me, not what I think should interest me?
- What are my values, the non-negotiables that I won't compromise on?
- What do I want to achieve in this life?
- What do I want to be known for?
The catch here was, I had to answer these questions independent from the roles I play. I had to try and eliminate the environment that plays a key role in my life. I had to answer these questions not as a dad, not as a husband, not as an employee or colleague. Just as myself. Who am I when you strip all of that away?
This wasn't easy. My mind kept defaulting to what others expected of me, what society says I should value. My son, my wife — our little family — is all what my head was thinking about all the time. But slowly, underneath all that, I managed to hear my own voice again.
Tamil — my mother tongue is what I've been passionate about since basically forever. The language that connects me to my roots, the language that I think and feel in, the language that feels like home no matter where I am.
Then there is fitness. Something that started with me trying to gain weight has become part of my lifestyle. Staying healthy and fit is something that's really important to me.
Cooking has always been my entry to expressing myself. While others paint or make music, for me, the kitchen was the place to be creative. Merging the Tamil, Japanese and Italian cuisine and coming up with my own 5-course meal was always something I've been dreaming about.
Reading and, recently, also writing fiction. This is how I love to escape the daily grind. Following along the great minds of detectives or adventurers and imagining what they might be seeing and feeling is something that will instantly calm me down and get me relaxed.
As I reflected on all of this, my values became clearer. After a few iterations of trying to put my thoughts into words, I came up with these five that are non-negotiable to me.
- Grow by helping others grow.
- Always be free.
- Be mindful of others and yourself.
- Never stop learning.
- (My) people matter.
The next step was to figure out what makes me unique. I'm not unique by a single trait or skill. But the combination of various things makes me pretty unique:
I'm a diaspora Tamil who's really good at speaking, writing, and reading Tamil, but can also speak two other languages fluently. This combination of linguistic ability, paired with my passion for technology and building things, gives me a unique perspective and toolset.
Bringing all of this back to the surface also revealed my motivation to live. What I would call my personal mission statement.
As a multilingual diaspora Tamil, I preserve and share our linguistic and cultural heritage through content creation and technology, helping disconnected Tamils rediscover their roots while opening our world to those eager to understand us.
This mission statement is nothing new. I clearly remember that I used to talk about this back in 2018/2019. The “how” has changed since then but the “what” and “for who” has not changed at all.
Writing it all down, seeing it on paper, something shifted. The fog started clearing. I realized that I had finally found who I was again.
I'm clearly not fully there yet. Identity isn't something you find once and it stays there forever. It evolves, it grows, it needs tending. But for the first time in years, I feel that I have my compass back. And I feel like I know in what direction to go.
The next time life throws me a curveball and I question who I am, I'll have my answer ready. Because I know myself again. And that makes all the difference. The person I've rediscovered isn't exactly who I was before — he's evolved, shaped by experience — but he's authentically me.
Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash