Choir Notes

Who Are You?
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4175

A dialogue in Lewis Carroll’s tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland illustrates one reason change can be so hard:

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

. . . Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”1

We’re like Alice in some ways—change fills our days too. And because each change shapes us in undeniable ways, life’s instability may sometimes cause us to question who we really are.

But while changes happen around us and to us, what really matters is what happens inside us—the way we cherish loved ones after the loss of a family member, the way we look at life after the birth of a baby, the way we treat strangers after we’ve lived in an unfamiliar place. These are all aspects of our true identity that seem to manifest themselves most clearly after life-changing events.

Think back to the changes you have faced. How did you handle the pressure, pain, or even exhaustion that accompanied them? What about the excitement, the creativity, the exhilaration? Did you wait out the shifts and turns hoping to fall back into old ways, or did you cross the bridge to new understanding and catch the vision of fresh opportunity? Did you learn things about yourself that you could not have learned in any other way?

The willingness to make the best of an unexpected condition, the desire to keep focused on strengths and goals, to find balance, to move forward with confidence may be signs that we are adjusting, growing, and learning. Startling changes caused Alice to struggle with the caterpillar’s question, “Who are you?” But if we are willing to accept and learn from them, life’s changes can actually help us see who we really are.

1 (1920), 60.