Who Am I? A Modern Day Marcus Aurelius

This is a question that I believe for most people is one of the most difficult to answer. Most often the first and most natural answer is, well, your name.

I am Dan Wagstaff. But what if we asked again but reframed and asked, who is Dan Wagstaff?

What now? Maybe we would answer with our age, sex, and where we are from. ASL for those familiar with the old msn chat rooms haha

I am Dan wagstaff, 36, male and in Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia.

A lot of the time to others that answer would suffice.

But where this question really begins to get hard is when we are faced with adversity, when we meet obstacles, when we become successful, when we merge our lives with another person to form an intimate and romantic relationship, when we become parents and so on.

Who is Dan wagstaff in the face of adversity or loss?

Who is Dan wagstaff at the height of success however he chooses to define that?

Who is Dan wagstaff, the lover, the boyfriend, the husband, the father?

Asking these sorts of questions can be confronting. Often, too confronting for people to entertain, but I think even more so, questions that aren’t even on people’s radar.

For me, there are things about myself that I remember displaying during adversity that I have wished I could do over.

There are moments of happiness and elation that I have wished I appreciated more in the moment because they were so rare or hard fought.

There are conversations as a partner or husband that I could have had or actions I could have taken where maybe a disagreement might not have reached a certain level of intensity or frustration.

But how are we to know all of this in the moment?

Well, we aren’t and there is part of me that believes that while in any given moment we act in a way that we believe aligns with who we are, I feel that we act in certain ways because we don’t understand enough about who we are.

Something that has truly helped me discover more about myself in the past 6 years is writing.

Not just writing fluff about what I did for the day, but actually writing the details and depths of how I feel sometimes in the most explicit details.

At times what is spilled onto the pages is nonsensical garbage and a way to pass the time.

But occasionally, more frequently the more consistently I do it, I end up writing insightful, enlightening and philosophical pages that give me new levels of self awareness and understanding.

A modern day, slightly less eloquent Marcus Aurelius.

So who am I?

Well, who we are can change. I think that’s something that people view negatively. I disagree with that. I want to continue to change, to evolve, the learn more.

Right now,

I am love.

I am acceptance.

I am gratitude.

This is Dan Wagstaff.