Identifying Your Self | LifeRocks

Have you heard of identity amnesia? It is a rare condition that causes people to suddenly and unexplainably forget who they are, where they are and what they are doing. Though this medically happens only in extreme and rare cases, many of us can experience an amnesia of our identity as a person. What do you do when you forget who you are? What happens when you don't know your purpose anymore? Only God, who created and knows you, has the ability to show and lead you to your true identity. Will you trust Him to lead you? You think about it, let's talk about it.

TRANSCRIPT:
Hello world! Today I want you to consider “identity amnesia.” This is when you forget who you are. This is not the same as retrograde amnesia, when you forget parts of your past, but really forgetting who you are in the present. That’s a deeper problem, because you not only don’t know who you are, but you are lost because you do not know who you are, and that causes a lot of complications for yourself and others. The father of a friend of mine walked away from his house twenty years ago. They’re still attempting to find him. They’ve given up on the find—however, they’re more afraid now of what he might do to himself and he might do to others. Identity amnesiac, they’re called.

Now, that happens to us on occasion. It may happen to you when you forget your name and your password, because your name is the closest sibling to your identity. Remember the kid’s puzzle which said, “What belongs to me but I never use?” What belongs to me but I never use? Of course, the kids will tell you that the answer is your name. It belongs to you, but you never use, because others use that toward you.

Identity amnesia is not only that you lose yourself, but the consequences of having lost yourself affects many others. In 2005, a man by the name of Raymond Power Jr. stepped out of his own life. A 57-year-old New Yorker—a father and a husband, church goer, family man, Boy Scout leader—who had been experiencing Vietnam era depression, had also seen the towers being attacked in 2001, suddenly disappeared. They put his face and name out on America’s most wanted videos and programs, and another homeless man identified him in Chicago. He couldn’t really remember his name. He thought it had something to do with tower, so they called him Raymond Power and J Tower—they connected it. The family was so happy to find him, but they were terribly sad, because the man did not know who he was. His wife said he was totally fine till he disappeared. He functioned all right, then he forgot who he was.

Have you ever forgotten your name? That would be a terribly embarrassing situation. I mean, it’s embarrassing when you forget somebody else’s name, whose name you should know, it’s at the tip of your tongue, and you’re trying to search for his name…What if you forgot your own name? What would you do? Would you cough a lot, to find out what your name is? Would you ask for your wife to tell you what your name is? Would you ask for your own business card so that you would remember what your name is? You know all those tactics in remembering somebody else’s name. But a bigger problem than losing your name is to lose your identity—your core identity. When you lose your core identity, you engage in all sorts of self destruction, and delusion, and self deception. What you need is somebody who is intimately acquainted with you, who knows you just like you are, and will not dismiss you, who will remember you and will help you identify yourself. In your 1.0 version, you have forgotten who you are. And being lost, you damage yourself and you damage others. But the one who can upgrade you from 1.0 to 2.0 is God...

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