In the last few months, I've pondered what constitutes the true "me." This path is, of course, fraught with challenges as the world around me is constantly offering various identities for me to adopt. However, I've been intentionally looking past that, seeking to view the situation from a transcendental viewpoint. That is, to say, how God created the unique "me." At the innermost part of my heart, what ultimately makes me tick? What, without fail, speaks to that inner part of myself?

One of the primary motivations for this exploratory work is developing a healthy method of avoiding burnout. About two years ago, I underwent a challenging period of my life where my burnout levels reached the point of medically disqualifying me from work. Since then, I've been trying to understand what led me to that point and how to best avoid it. As part of this exploration, I landed on the question: who is the true me? The me that God uniquely created for a specific purpose on this Earth.

One of the things I've found while exploring this question is that I had, unknowingly, established several barriers between the "visible me" and the "real me." In other words, various life experiences had caused me to hide the real me, choosing instead to put forth a facade that satisfies the world around me. Some of these experiences are more traumatic than others, but together, they established a wall thick enough that when I first started to ask myself this question, I came back dumbfounded.

As I began to break down these barriers and wrestle with the question more intimately, I found that three qualities eventually rose to the top. These qualities, I believe, are essentially the foundation of my unique identity in the world. They are in the metaphorical driver's seat of my life, interacting with the world around me on a daily basis. Given my worldview is rooted in a strong understanding of biblical truths, it didn't surprise me that I ended up with a triad. More specifically, it is a complimentary triad in that each quality naturally feeds into the other. Let me briefly cover each one of them.

Curious

The first quality that I identified is my curious nature. Where some people are satisfied with a surface-level understanding of something, I've always had a strong desire to push past that and explore the true nature of how something works. I'm constantly building and refining mental models of the various systems around me. As soon as something challenges or breaks one of those models, I have an innate desire to explore and understand why. It's an internal hunger that will keep me up at night and prevent rest until I find a satisfactory place to land.

I've developed a unique trait in this quality: appreciating the grey areas. Having spent a significant portion of my life ministering to others, especially in conflict resolution, I've come to understand that life is full of tension. In many cases, I don't think this tension will ever be solved on this side of heaven. However, whenever I encounter this tension, I have developed a habit of finding the "radical center." That is to say, the middle point that is radically different from the opposing views. As I study the life of Jesus more and more, I begin to see He is the radical center. The radical center between truth and love, justice and mercy, and so on. I have applied this truth to my curious nature to avoid falling into the pitfall of seeing things as black and white. It informs everything, including my political views, philosophical views, and even how I view the technical world around me in my day job as an SRE.

This quality of curiosity, I believe, was embedded in the person that God created me to be from the beginning. As the years go by, He continues to refine it into something that can withstand the tensions of life.

Analytical

The second quality I identified is my analytical nature. Curiosity can drive a person to explore new ways of thinking, but it doesn't necessarily drive them into an exhaustive search that considers multiple ways to look at something. Whereas someone may explore the answer to something and settle on a particular view without much additional investigation, I am driven to examine the solution from as many angles as possible.

I have found this particular quality can be overwhelming to others around me. "Why can't you just be satisfied?" As I pondered the barriers I had found, I saw a clear connection between how others perceived my quirks and my desire to hide them. My analytical nature often gets me in trouble with the impatient, those who can satisfy themselves by only slightly examining a particular issue.

Over the years, like my curiosity, I've found my analytical nature has also been refined. I believe this quality, above the other two, was one of the primary drivers behind my burnout. Unchecked and unmitigated, it can turn into a firestorm of stress and anxiety as the complexity of the world around me increases day by day. I've learned to put a governor of sorts behind it, one based on biblical truths: I don't have to hold the entire world in my hands. In other words, I don't need to analyze everything completely and thoroughly to a level of complete understanding. There is One who has and does do that, and in Him, my analytical soul can find peace.

By no means does this evolution stump my innate desire to look at something from every angle. Instead, it brings a natural inward focus, examining myself and understanding whether this nature is getting the best of me. Life can be overwhelming, and tempering this quality in those moments is what I believe true wisdom to be.

Educative

The final quality I identified is my educative nature. Meaning, the innermost me is deeply concerned about teaching and sharing with those around me. It's one thing to be deeply curious and analytical for the sake of growing my own knowledge. The true me cannot and never will be satisfied with stopping there; satisfaction has only ever come after investing the effort to share my new understanding with the world around me.

I have a deep appreciation for the fact that my current level of knowledge is solely the result of others investing in me. I have always strived to be a sponge, soaking in as much as possible from those more experienced than me. This experience has continued to drive my thirst for sharing all I can with others, understanding that this cycle is critical for feeding the next generation of individuals who share qualities similar to mine.

Like the other qualities, my educative nature has continued to be refined over the years. Some years ago, I learned a famous phrase: "Perfection is the enemy of the good." My curious and analytical nature often drove me toward perfection before I could open up and share with others. Over time, I've found that being humble and sharing things earlier is much more impactful. Not only does it provide feedback earlier, but it also invites those around me to participate in the exploratory process instead of staying isolated the whole time. This naturally makes me vulnerable, especially in cases where my knowledge turns out to be very weak. Still, staying humble in these times has contributed significantly towards my continued growth.

Fin

As I alluded to earlier, the more I explored these three qualities, the more I recognized their synergistic behavior. Perhaps I can liken them to a car: my curiosity is the engine constantly driving me forward. My analytical nature is like the various sensors and readings, allowing me to analyze the world around me. Finally, my educative nature represents the journey from one destination to another, satisfying me to return for more.

What have I gained in this journey to understand my true inner self? First, it has helped me to understand what makes me tick. As I move through life and pick up and put down various aspirations, these qualities naturally inform me of what aspirations are healthy for me. Which ones feed these inner qualities and will likely keep me healthy in the long run? From a career perspective, I've found this new knowledge invaluable.

Secondly, it helps me understand why I've created barriers in myself over the past many years. If I could pick a phrase others use to describe me, it would be "a bit much." For many people, these three qualities together can be overbearing. It overwhelms them, and they struggle to understand why I am so different. Some healthily do this, while others choose a much more harmful way, contributing to me building barriers. While I used to think these barriers were bad, I'm beginning to understand it's a necessary way to protect myself in what can sometimes be a harsh world. By selectively choosing how much of my inner self I reveal, I can maintain relationships that are otherwise healthy for me to have.

Which brings me to my final point: it helps me identify relationships that are very important to me. In my three-plus decades of living, I can count on one hand the number of individuals I have come across who share most of these inner qualities. I never really understood why our friendships flourished so strongly or why I sometimes mourned their loss so intensely. I now realize that these individuals, the true inner person of each, shared many of these unique qualities. The satisfaction of sharing your true self with someone, devoid of any barriers or facade, cannot be explained with words. Of these relationships that still remain, I now cherish them all the more.

Of course, I am by no means at the end of this journey. As God continues to refine these qualities, and as I become more observant of the interactions they cause in the world, I'm sure I will develop an even deeper understanding of the true me. I have only scratched the surface of the unique person God has created me to be.