It is so interesting how one simple question can be so hard to answer.

I first heard that question from my friend Marc about 2 years ago. We were leaving a ballroom dancing class and he and I stood there for half an hour chatting about life. He was very excited that night. He was sharing with me the things he has been learning from Zen meditation, his new-found hobby. He just couldn’t stop telling me about it.

You see, Marc was the kind of guy who was full of energy. He was the kind of guy who was constantly in motion. He loved riding his motorcycle fast down the curvy mountain roads around the area we lived. He loved falling down out of the sky, cutting through the air as he jumped out of an airplane many thousands of feet above ground. He loved sharing memories with friends over a nice home-cooked meal. Among many other things, he also really loved women. He was the kind of guy who loved life. He was a man full of passions… and Zen meditation provided him the calmness and quietness he needed to slow down his fast-paced lifestyle.

That night, I expressed to him how happy I was to have moved to California the year before. I really felt at home, here, in SoCal. I was telling him how I felt I was growing on so many personal levels since I’ve started living here. I’ve done so many new things and met so many new people! I was having a blast but something bugged me. I had one recurring nagging question that kept on crawling back in my mind: what do I want to do with my life? What is my purpose? The professional life in the corporate world of a big Fortune 500 company was still fairly enjoyable for me at the time… but why wasn’t I feeling fulfilled?

That’s when he asked me: “Khiem, who are you?”

I was taken little bit aback. What did he mean? Is this some kind of trick question? I replied without too much thought: “I’m me.”

“But who is me? Who is Khiem?” he continued.

I tried to come up with something to say but no word came out of my mouth.

I didn’t have an answer.

I was stumped.

He explained later that Zen meditation was the one single practice that was helping him find answers to these kind of questions. Obviously, I became very intrigued but by the end of that night, I wasn’t satisfied. He asked me a question, I didn’t have the answer, and he definitely wasn’t helping me find the “right” answer.

I remember that in college, I went through a soul-searching phase. The question of the time was: what can I do for a living that I would enjoy? I spent a lot of time pondering and reflecting on my own. Because I couldn’t come up with an answer, I didn’t see the meaning to a lot of the things I was doing. Because I couldn’t come up with an answer, I didn’t find the motivation to try a lot of new things either. “What was the point?”, I thought. In the end, I stopped looking for the answer. Instead, I took on jobs with the goal of moving up the socio-economic ladder. As rewarding as these jobs may have been, they were never fulfilling. Excitement was there, but real passion was missing.

“Who are you?” felt like my soul-searching phase in college. I didn’t like that. I knew that I couldn’t just ponder on the answer and not do anything about it. That didn’t work before. That wouldn’t work now. So I started exposing myself more to new things to gain life experience. I cliff jumped, I sky dived, I took dancing classes, I went to my first-ever baseball game at the Yankee Stadium in New York, I went racing on the track, I traveled to most states in the US, I took a seduction bootcamp, I went to a bondage ball, I tried surfing, I went to the batting cage, etc. Whatever I could find, I’d try.

The more I tried things, the more I hoped I would discover the very boundaries that would define me.

The question stayed with me for a while. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but it hit me.

I was never supposed to answer that question literally in the first place.

“Who are you?” was meant for me to realize something.

It was meant for me to realize that I was not one thing. I was many things… but more importantly I was many things that would keep on changing over time. If I had answered the question “who are you?”, all I would have done was create a snapshot of all the things that I was at a specific moment in time.

Defining who I am goes beyond who I am today.

So now… I’ve stopped searching. I know my answer.

This is where inner game grows from. When people in the Community meet me, they have asked me before how I have developed the calmness they sense in me. They attribute it to me having strong inner game. Yes, I think I have pretty decent inner game, but I could definitely use a boost of “I’m the shit!” from time to time.

For me, having a good vibe is mostly a mastery of body language or non-verbal forms of communication. Having good inner game, on the other hand, stems from my ability to accept who I am as I am now. It’s about becoming comfortable with my identity as an ever-evolving, constantly changing being.

But “how do I get there?”, you ask. If you are expecting a fancy answer, I’m sorry to disappoint you but from my experience, pursue the very things you are interested in or curious about. Give yourself permission to live without fear, apology or excuse. Keep doing more. In time, you will be able to answer “who are you?” for yourself. Your sense of identity will no longer derive from the things you do, but from the meaning you give to the things you love.

Figuring yourself will take some time but if you are curious, the following products inspired me:

• David Deida’s explanation of consciousness/masculine energy in his audio product The Way of the Superior Man: The Teaching Sessions (I haven’t read the book of the same name yet, but I’m sure he talks about the same thing in there)
• The movie Peaceful Warrior when they talk about life as a constant series of moments that you have to pay attention to.
• In10se’s take on identity in his audio program The October Man Sequence

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