This past week, I was introducing myself to a colleague. As this was related to work, I was mostly discussing my scientific background when I spurted a sentence that seemed to describe a reality of my life both foreign and imbued into every fiber of my being: I’ve been a scientist for more than seven years. It seems strange to say that; I don’t even feel like I was an adult seven years ago, let alone somebody that joined the ranks of “people who do science,” which happens to include a lot of millions of people. “Scientist” was a term I thought I had rightfully earned by getting a chemistry degree and then getting a job as a researcher, but as I reflected on my experience, it occurred to me my first real scientific experience came as an undergraduate researcher at UK. To some degree, my fascination with science goes back nearly two decades to when I first started to inundate my doctors with questions about lung function tests, medications, bacteria, and whatever else I wanted to know about.

This “scientist” label has been easy for me to say for several years now and a million times easier to say than “writer.” I dunno why; I suppose with writing it was a hobby or passion that became something I was stronger at than I realized and it was even after somebody had paid me to write words before I ever really identified as a writer, and even after that, it took a couple of years before I said it easily, and I still have a hard time saying it without hedging it and invalidating myself. What is it about complimentary labels that we have so easy of a time assigning them to others but a much harder time assigning them to ourselves? Why are we so compelled to assign ourselves negative labels instead of positive ones? Why do we need labels for ourselves anyway? What is it about the concept of identity that leads us to need to define anything at all?

I watched Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself earlier this year and I wish I could say it changed my life. I’ve said that about a lot of art in the past. I’ve grandstanded; claimed that because of this [insert piece of art or major life event], I will never take a never moment for granted. And every time that’s been false. It was never a lie or an intentional Statement but rather me trying to imbue this new perspective of the world onto my future, a form of Manifestation, I suppose. The truth is: The film (and many other pieces of art or moments in life) have certainly influenced me in these moments and inspired me to pursue Life but the unfortunate reality is that these moments of euphoria, joy, inspiration are moments where we open ourselves up to possibly the most beautiful human emotion: Awe. The word “awesome” has been thrown around so much that it has really lost its authentic meaning. When we open our minds and hearts up to curiosity, we allow ourselves to view the world in the remarkable, wonderful reality of it all. When we allow ourselves to experience life, to be gentle on ourselves, to be filled with compassion and awe and devoid of anger and hate, the world opens itself up to us.

Derek does something beautiful in his film? performance? I don’t really know what to call it, but no matter what it is, you should watch it. What he does beautifully is he takes this concept of identity as a Concept — something that whether you think about the concept of “identity” itself a lot or not, is something that has deeply affected yours and everybody else you know’s life — and he eventually reveals to you how you’ve limited yourself by obsessing with identity which, to be clear, again, we are all always wrestling with identity, whether we explicitly acknowledge it or not. And if received as the artist intends, In and Of Itself strives to present to you a blue-or-red-pill moment. If you absorb what DelGaudio intends, what can come of watching In and Of Itself is an inflection point in your life where you stop limiting yourself for whatever reason.

It seems strange and cheesy to say that a film or any single piece of art could reveal something to yourself that you’ve not since acknowledged, especially when every person who views this film will view the same film and potentially leave with a different lesson. But DelGaudio’s performance doesn’t end with a overt statement “You struggle with this, and this is how you’re limiting yourself, and this is how it will be overcome.” Instead it leaves you wondering, figuring out where in his performance you related to him or somebody else, and how, really, when you get down to it, none of this shit matters to the extent that we treat it to, and for the shit that does matter, you’re allowed to feel whatever the fuck you need to feel. Liberation doesn’t always mean breaking chains; sometimes liberation is being told that you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling. 

I used to make fun of and scoff at astrology. It wasn’t in a truly malicious way; it was usually just in a way that seemed to think it was funny that people used the alignment of the planets to describe or justify their talents or insecurities. I didn’t resent people who used astrology as part of their lives. More so, I looked at it from a scientific way. I looked at the empirical evidence and found no supporting evidence that planetary alignment could influence a person. I’ve lightened my perspective on astrology in recent months. I don’t necessarily believe in it, but I also don’t see the harm in those who do. I also don’t feel the concept is nearly as ridiculous as I used to think. There are forces at play that cross incomprehensible distances; even the weak gravitational force that keeps our planet rotating the sun and the moon rotating earth cross distances that humans can hardly perceive. Why actually is it so strange to think there are forces or energy that we are yet to understand that may have some infinitesimal influence on human behavior and nature? It’s not really strange and the evidence is still essentially nonexistent, but my prior perspective of considering empirical evidence is more what changed. I see astrology as a framework, not that unlike Myers-Brigg scales, religions, philosophies, or whatever else we use to classify ourselves in a way that we like. I see astrology as a way for people to understand what matters to them, and I also see it as a path for people to feel more comfortable in embracing their strengths, acknowledging their weaknesses or struggles, and in becoming a more self-actualized version of themselves. If somebody has long struggled with their own confidence in their talents and they read a horoscope that describes that feeling, this person can often offload the stress of Being Confident as finally feeling validated by something grandiose, like the poetry of planetary alignment and the cosmos.

I’m not sure the way I described that makes as much sense as I’d like to do so let me briefly expound on this. We often struggle with parts of our identity — again, whether or not we directly acknowledge it or confront these struggles, this applies to all of us. Sometimes those parts of our identity can be parts we’re ashamed of, or they can actually be the parts of ourselves that we really like but we feel guilty for liking. If we know those parts of our identity inside our mind but we hesitate to speak them into existence (though they already exist somewhere) and then we read a horoscope that puts those feelings into words, and this horoscope is also supposedly catered to us, there is some liberation — and even beauty — in having had the alignment of the planets inspire this articulation of our Lived Experience. If a horoscope frees somebody of something they’ve struggled with, who gives a shit. Let people live. My limitation with any framework is when the framework is then held up as a structural barrier for the same person who the framework helped liberate them of a previous structural barrier. If a horoscope explains a feeling you had felt internally but hadn’t uttered, great, I hope you embrace it! But if a horoscope ever tells you because of this reading you are unable to do something or that the planets aligned and ordained you as being Bad something, I then tell you to ask what the hell the planets know about you anyhow.

In fewer words: Philosophical/moral/religious frameworks are good when we can use them to maximize strengths and improve weaknesses, but they are bad when they tell us something cannot be done. Do not allow for a framework to stymie your imagination. 

There’s a thread between my identity and career as a scientist, my writing, these stories I’m telling you, In and Of Itself, frameworks for how to live life, and the way my perspective on astrology has changed. With each passing year and major milestone or step in my life, a lesson is being more deeply embedded in my brain. This lesson is about how little we understand the world and how we are still living in an era where we don’t understand much. This lesson can be used to invalidate science, a perspective I very much disagree with. Science is an empirical art, and it is an inherently skeptical endeavor. Scientists are revolutionary and they must be radical in their views of the world, in their understanding of how the world is currently understood. Scientists must be skilled in understanding that there are parts of the world that we do understand quite well, and they must be able to articulate this confidently, but not so confidently that they lose the skeptical, curious part of themself that drove them to become a scientist in the first place.

I’m still young and I’m still young in my scientific career. I’m not as young as I once was — I just found my first few gray hairs only a month ago — but a realization has recently dawned upon me. I’m 27. For more than ten years once I learned of the life expectancy of CF when I was 8 or 9 years old, I doubted I’d live to this age. I doubted I’d ever see the world or explore life or challenge convention or do anything of substance. I assumed I’d die young. I never thought I’d reach the age of the people I looked up from a young age. This realization is dawning upon me at a time in my life where I am looking around at people that are the age of the people I once looked up to, the very same people that I admired because “they had it figured out.” And this realization is compounded by another romantic lesson that has invigorated my life: Nobody has ever had it figured out, and even better, there’s no such thing as figuring it out. These realizations come from my last couple of years of changing careers twice, moving to a second new city, and all the life that comes with turbulence; these realizations come on the heels of a pandemic, from meeting people, from losing people, from losing myself, from reaching rock bottom and experiencing the worst depression of my life, from talking to scientists pioneering research on the fringes of science, from reading about the world, from unlearning deeply ingrained biases, to understanding myself better than ever and finally developing a legitimate sense of compassion towards myself.

But this blog post is not about me. It’s not about anything, really. It’s just me unfurling my chaotic brain onto paper. It’s me waxing poetic in a way that hopefully, ideally resonates with at least one person, and even if it doesn’t, there’s value in me putting this part of me into the universe because it’s a very authentic part of myself. And my life has changed dramatically in realizing there are parts of myself I’m allowed to like. This part of myself, where I feel the need to wax poetic and draw threads between disparate concepts or parts of life, I like this part of myself. 

tl