A couple of days ago I received an interesting email from a young (27 years old) woman friend of mine. She mentioned that one of her “projects” during the last year or so was to loosen the bonds of thinking about herself as a young woman, instead learning to think of herself as a human. Her description was, “Recently, I’ve been trying to broaden some of the pre-programmed biases I have about gender roles. Over the last year, I’ve begun slowly to non-identify with my gender. I notice if I just think of myself as “human,” then I have more space in my mind for what kinds of things I allow myself to do, think, how I express myself, etc. I think I’m just trying to not box myself in with labels generally. Just because I’m 27 doesn’t mean I’m “too old” or “too young” for doing certain things. I’m allowed to be a joyous, awe struck playful kid engaged in life when I want to be. I’m also allowed to have a butt-load of wisdom even though I am considered “young.” I don’t need to box myself in to fit a preconceived idea I or others have about what I “should” be doing and behaving. Its a process, of course to slowly question and then unplug from the matrix of my own labels and boxes. But it’s been a fun project.”

Reading her words caused me to stop and think about how I think of myself. Do I mostly identify as “a man?” How much do I adjust myself to align with what a 74 year old man should be like, act like and think like? The gender idea is a bit tricky – it is hard to not box myself in to the role. After all, I am a big, imposing male and have been that way since adolescence. I have a history of doing extremely physical “manly” work, full of strength and vitality. That is not so much what I do now that I am moving into the “golden years” – but it is still how I think of myself. I suppose this is visualizing myself in a masculine wrapper. However, I don’t really think of myself as male or female, I just think of myself as a person. It happens that I am big, strong, with a beard and deep voice – but those aren’t “me”, they are just descriptions of the package. However, as I think back to my 20s I think perhaps I was much more concerned with fitting “the model.” That said, even back at that age I was pretty consistently “marching to my own drummer” – that was something that my family promoted as a good thing. Being a bit eccentric was always acceptable to them (not so much to many of my school mates).