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Issue 17
Identifying Self
reviewed by Khris Fruits
Waiting for the rug weaver's study group to start the other day, a woman made a statement that seemed to astonish most everyone there. She said she knitted, but that she was not a knitter. To many of the attendees, this sounded like a riddle.
We live in a culture that is focused on doing. From that point of view, it seems to follow that what you do defines who you are — that your doing defines your being. Therefore, if you knit, you must be a knitter. This seems backwards to me, a surface way of looking at the complex web that is the self and how we identify self. I've known how to crochet far longer than I've known how to weave. Yet "crocheter" is not one of the words that I would put on a list of things to define who I am. Crocheting is something I do from time to time. It is a tool I use to express myself on some other level. It is the medium, not the message. Using a hammer doesn't make me a carpenter. I could say the same about a number of things that I do on a regular basis: I play piano, but I am not a pianist; I paint, but I am not a painter.
On the other hand, I was a weaver before I could weave. I think the way we live is that we be ourselves into doing. Out in front of me was this thing called being a weaver; I identified with it, so of course I learned how to do weaving as a way to better express my being a weaver. In that sense, how we identify ourselves doesn't have much to do with either ability or skill level. Even before I knew what a loom was, I was a weaver. It makes sense that with time, one becomes better at doing the things that define the self. If you choose what defines you, then you're probably inclined to put time into it. The more I weave, the better I become at weaving; the more I write, the better I become at writing.
To let your doing define your being is to give excuse to accident. To let your being define your doing is a choice. Be who you are so the rest of us can see you doing it.
Khris Fruits, Managing Editor of The Polishing Stone, is making a big life from many small things: weaving, writing, managing an eBay store, and now editing. Find more of him at www.quothacreations.com.
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