self identity

it has dawned on me that perhaps too much ado is made of the struggles of adolescence with respect to self identity.  certainly, kids appear to have the most apparent conflict in getting peace of mind about their identity.  mostly, i think the folk most immune to self identity challenges are little children…those no older than 3.  from that age forward, life is primarily a challenge of an ever-present self identity struggle.  teens are the most obvious with their struggle…certainly hormones amplify the struggle.  and those of us growing through our twenties and thirties and forties and beyond…we struggle…mostly more internally.  many present a calmness of self…a groundedness.  and the reality is that the world changes and we are impacted.  one day we encounter someone we hadn’t anticipated and we get bent out of shape, or we get intently intrigued, or we find old demons popping back into our awareness and we relapse into behaviors that we had previously learned were not helpful or productive or honest.  further, our challenges with self identity are the challenges of the universe…we are all connected whether we want to believe it or not…we cannot escape it and we will be impacted.  we cannot stop it.  and those that handle it the best are ok with that.  i still think it would be good to grow up to be truck.