Before You Were Taught Who You Are

Who are we? Are we our names, our ideas, our emotions, our convictions? Or are we something that merely observes everything that goes on?

This question has been bothering me for some time. It’s not because it sounds mystical, but rather because things no longer make sense as they once did.

I lost a part of myself in September 2025. Everything appeared normal from the outside. On the inside, though, I felt cut off from certainty, from myself, and from the person I believed myself to be.

I led a typical life up until that point. I had faith in patterns. If things had previously worked out, they would do so once more. Life would react appropriately if I did the right things.

And it wasn’t just disappointment when that didn’t occur, it shook the hell out of me. The questions began at that point. Were these ideas really mine? Or was I just repeating what I had been taught all my life?

I was raised in a Sanatana Dharma household in India. I learned about karma, which is the idea that good deeds will be returned to you. I learned to give without expecting anything in return. I thought it was true. It seemed real.

However, I soon noticed something different. A person who was brought up in a totally different setting holds a completely different belief, but with the same degree of certainty. They’re not incorrect either. They simply differ from one another.

That’s when it clicked. Not only do we inherit customs, but we also inherit ways of thinking from our parents, from society, from religion and from everything in our immediate environment. These beliefs become so infused over time that we stop challenging them. They start acting automatically. They determine what is safe, what is uncomfortable, and what is right or wrong.

If I say harming an animal is wrong, it makes sense to me. However, it’s typical for someone who grew up in a butcher family. It’s their life and their work. Who is correct, then?

Perhaps nobody is. Perhaps right and wrong aren’t as carved in stone as we believe. They are constructed.

Our minds continue to evaluate everything according to unconsciously selected patterns. It was mostly formed during our childhood. From there, it subtly moulds everything, including our choices, responses, and reality as a whole.

Something changed when I actually saw this. It gave me an absolute sense of freedom. What is truly fixed if belief shapes everything? We pretend that there are strict rules in life, but the majority of these rules are just things that we have decided upon, such as labels, meanings, and directions. These are a set of principles set up by someone and have been followed since long. These principles are not right or wrong. We gave them labels.

Who made the definition of north? Who determined what constitutes success and failure? What does a good life look like? Yes, we did. To be more precise, we were informed and we agreed with it.

Something lightens when you realise that. Life doesn’t lose its purpose. It opens up. You begin to see that everything has meaning because we are the ones who give it.

Then something else begins to fade away. The urge to argue. The need to prove your belief is right and someone else’s is wrong. The habit of defending your religion or your ideas like a sports team.

It fades because you understand that people don’t believe what they believe because they are right or wrong. They believe it because that’s how they were shaped. Their morals, their principles, their reactions, it all comes from patterns built over years.

And yes, many of these principles help people live a better life. Naturally, you feel people should follow them. But if someone doesn’t, they’re not wrong. They just see things differently.

What feels right to them may not feel right to you, and what feels right to you may not feel right to them. So there’s nothing to fight about.

You don’t need to agree with everything, but you also don’t feel the need to resist everything. You just understand. And that brings a kind of quiet inside you, even with yourself. The thoughts don’t stop. They still come, fear, doubt, opinions, reactions. But you don’t get pulled into all of them anymore.

You start watching them. And in that, there’s stillness. You’re just present. Not trying to control everything. Not trying to prove anything.

Life becomes simpler. Not perfect, just lighter. Even the discomfort you feel when you try something new that resistance in your body is not true. It’s just old conditioning. And if it was learned, it can be unlearned (Requires a lot of effort though).

At first, it feels wrong. Your body resists. But if you don’t give that resistance power, something slowly changes. And once it changes, it’s hard to go back.

Because you see it now. You were never as limited as you thought.

So who are we?

Maybe we’re not the name, not the belief, not even the thoughts. Maybe we’re the one noticing all of it, the one watching, the one changing. And maybe there isn’t a fixed purpose waiting somewhere.

Maybe we’re creating it, with every thought, every belief, every choice.

And the best part, you don’t need to believe all of this too. You have your own ideas to be free.