Thank you Mr. Townshend, Mr. Daltrey, and you crafty fellows on CBS:

Camera pans over night city scape of Las Vegas as the guitar solo begins.  Flash graphic of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" for a few seconds... cue lyrics:

"Who are you?  Who, who...who, who?" (repeat at least 23 times)

My mom and I used to watch this show every week.  It was fun.  I stayed up til ten to watch people dig up bodies in the desert, blow up apples to solve crimes, and shoot jello to find the culprit.

And every week I would have that song from stuck in my head.

While it may not be the most lyrically creative song ever written (like the great Can-I-Bus line: "Yo, whoever grabs the mic after me'll get booed, and get everything in da club thrown at you and ya crew.") it is definitely a consistently relevant lyric.  For everybody, everywhere, all the time.

And this is also the topic of discussion in my head today: who are you?  What is your identity?  And maybe the bigger question: from where does one acquire/learn/maintain identity?  Now, I know that the "good Christian" answer says: "you get your identity from God."

Lame (repeat at least 24 times.)  Lame.

I will guarantee that God designed more for us.  That's why we have relationships, passions, hobbies, conflicts, angers, fears.  We are dynamic people.  So, I'll ask again: from where do you acquire/learn/maintain your identity?

Me?  I'm a husband.  I am a student of Psychology.  I am a son to 4 parents (that like each other).  I am a reader, a thinker, a lover, a friend, a coffee drinker, a napper, a writer, a speaker, a frisbee player, a small group leader, a learner, a laugher, an adventurer, I'm imaginative, prideful, realistic, pessimistic, introvert, contemplative, playful.  I like rain, heat, swiming snow.  I love family dinners and brotherly bocce...

The list is long, and possibly endless.  But what I'm wrestling with today, and hoping that others wrestle with this as well.  Who are you?  Where do you get your identity?  And how does all that manifest itself into your identity?  How does it show?  What do you hide?  What are you ashamed of?  What are you proud of?

I know that this isn't something that I can't shoot a jello mold with a .45, shine a black light, and scrape a few DNA cells off the bullet to find the answer; although that would be nice.  So for now I'll just keep singing, "Who are you?  Who, who...who, who?"  (and keep singing, and keep signing, because now it's stuck in my head.)