A post of the category ‘I have more questions than I have answers’
“Where are you from?” I heard my professor asking, going through our class full of exchange students from around the world. “Norway,” one said. “Germany”, someone else. “Ok”, my professor said and smiled.
Talking about our origins, we immediately think of our national identity, the country we were born in, maybe the country our parents are from. So I was born in Germany – not that I could remember any of that, but so I’ve been told. And I have a German passport – just like my parents. So we’re all from Germany. Are we?
“But where are you really from?”, he asked. I guess he must have looked into quite confused faces. “Where were you before you were born in Norway?”, looking at the Norwegian who first answered his question. “Well, I don’t know”, he answered.
“I try not to live in the past…but…sometimes the past lives in me” – Jamie Ford
It could be just completely random, coming out of nowhere, suddenly being alive, being born in Germany, out of nowhere. A part of me thinks so.
“Why did you come to Taiwan?”, the professor asked. It’s a question I’ve been asked so many times and still, I’m not fully able to give a satisfying answer. And neither was my Norwegian friend. “Well, I’m just interested in Asia”. “No”, the professor answered, “there must be more than that”. So he asked all of us whether we have ever really thought about why we suddenly had that crazy idea of coming to a country somewhere in East Asia most people in the West barely know about, Taiwan. He asked why we do what we do and if there is anything that we feel like somehow lead us to where we are right now. He asked whether there is a chance that this is not the first time we exist. A life before life?
“I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times” – Goethe
And then he told us about his own story, how he grew up on one of those tiny Taiwanese islands (Lan Yu), however being fluent in English from a very early age. He later moved to the US and apparently right fit into the American culture. Similarly, he said, he always had the ability to hear extremely well, as if he has practices to distinguish between specific sounds, for example in music. “What if there is a reason I learned the language so easily, a reason why I felt this urge to live in the US, a reason why I managed to integrate myself so easily”.
“I recognized you instantly. All of our lives flashed through my mind in a split second. I felt a pull so strongly towards you that I almost couldn’t stop it” – J. Sterling
Some of us have made similar experiences. One could be recurring dreams of people and places as a reflection of our unconscious mind. Some people claim to have experienced certain events, seen particular people, or gone to specific places frequently in their dreams that feel very familiar and somehow recognizable. Something else is a déjà vu, which is that bizarre feeling that somehow we have experienced a moment in time before Lastly, some may have a great affinity for certain cultures or environments. This is where I tend to place myself, for instance, seeing my somehow clear drive towards the Asian culture.
“The doctrine of metempsychosis is, above all, neither absurd nor useless…It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection” – Voltaire
So what if there are experiences from a previous life that influence the way we do what we do. Hard to imagine, but WHAT IF. What if there’s a reason you are doing what you are doing. What if there was something before, something you don’t know about but somehow you have this feeling. If this was actually the case, how would this change the way you live, how would it change the value of the things you do, especially the things you like doing, the personal things? Would it have an impact on your ‘purpose’?
“Where are you from?” I don’t know, I cannot know. Indeed, this question is unanswerable. Was there something before my life here began? Maybe – only God/the universe knows. Though there is scientific research in this direction and plenty of videos on children who remember parts of their previous lives. Maybe I was here before, in whatever form. Thinking about this made me reflect on the things I enjoy doing, the things I have learned so easily, the things that deeply touch me, and my drive towards specific environments. There’s no answer to this and frankly, I have not concluded anything. However, it does help me to focus on the things I am doing and equally questioning them.
Jacob Nilius
I am someone who was never able to answer this “simple” question in a simple manner. Isn’t it also weird that we associate ourselves with the constraint of nations? Why don’t we answer this question by saying: “My mother’s belly.” Just a random thought.
Thanks for your comment, Heidy. Identity is always an interesting topic to discuss as it is something we deal with our whole life. Talking about national identity we often ignore what this does with people that are not able to give an easy answer to this question. In that context, you have probably heard the question “Where are you really from?” when people actually meant where your family is from as if that would be your “true origin”. With this article, I tried to go around national identities and rather wanted to raise the question of whether there is a possibility of previous life experiences that somehow influence us in life now.