Do you ever wonder who you are? I mean the inside you, not your physical relationship with the people around you. Usually after our schooling ends we discover we have lots of free time. We spend a lot of that free time thinking, usually about us. What better subject is there after all?

We have a thin veneer formed around us by this time in our life. It is what has formed from what our parents, other family members, and friends think about us. What they perceive or think we are. This thin veneer is a good guess of who we really are, though at other times it does not wear so well.

When it does not wear so well, it is because there has been lots of time for serious introspection about ourselves, who we are, and our place in the world. It dawns on us slowly that those ideas and thoughts that others want us to be are not us. The thin veneer that has been placed upon us does not fit quite right. Or perhaps it does not fit at all.

Looking inside ourselves for what is really the first time, these differences may appear. The clothes we have been wearing all our life suddenly do not seem to be the right style for us. Our hair style, which we have had since we were children now belongs to a stranger. We wonder how it ended up on us, and how we went all this time without realizing that we are not the person we see in the mirror.

For some of us this is a sad and occasionally scary time in our life. As we are programmed to fight or flight, so we normally do one or the other. We change our looks, habits, and other things about us as we fight the idea of us we see in the mirror.

Others run away from what they discover. Why that has to be us. That is how we have been our whole lives, how can it be any different? We pretend we never noticed that we are not who we see in the mirror. We go about our day as if the discovery never happened.
For those who embrace change, and start on a quest to discover who we really are, it is a ride full of ups and downs. Imagine you are the person in the picture. You spend your days going up and down the stairs, trying on this clothing and that clothing. Cutting your hair and letting it grow out. Wearing clothes that do not quite go together, but they seem more like you than any other clothes you have been wearing.

I think we do a disservice to our young adults. We no longer have any formal ritual, or initiation process where one can make the change from being a child to being an adult. We do not have a process where someone is sen as their own person and have the freedom to be who they think they are.

Generally for some, it is a painful process for everyone around. Expectations parents had for their children are not met because as young adults the child may not know who they are, but they know they are not what the parents think they should be.

If you find yourself in this situation, there are a few things you can do. The first thing one should do is remember this is your life, and it does not belong to anyone else. It is your life to do whatever you want to do with it, within some boundaries of common sense.

If you are a parent, it is important to understand that children grow up, and need to be respected for who they are trying to become, not what you may think they are. You have done your job getting them to this point, now they need your support and understanding until they become who they think they should be.

The stairwell of life goes up and it goes down. This period is the spring time of adult life. It is a rare time when we have the freedom to start finding out who we really are and what we are about. It may feel like we are on level ground, but none of us are really. No matter who we are, we are either going up or down the stairwell of life.