A Case for Renaming Ourselves

There is a responsibility to naming. A sacredness usually reserved, at first, to those that brought us into the world. But before that happens we are born title-less. I am sure of it. We are scrunched up infants that are some sort of something that is nothing until it is determined who we are in the utterance of a calling. And suddenly we are. I would wager to say that our aliveness, if I can call it that, is not altered by our naming, but confirmed. We are thrust into this prophecy in the mouths of those who hold power over our budding selves. We carry this that is the weight of living.

If I had a visual I imagine this process is a tethering to a connection with the whole. Some sort of attachment to community or belonging or the past or whatever we are named for. And the way we alter this line of being is through renaming, if by choice or force. Even then, the connection does not cease to be just because it isn’t immediately apparent when we are called. We are always made up of past selves and invisible threads of recent interrelatedness. Perhaps that is why naming is so important. Perhaps this is why renaming is so complicated. Because what is in a name besides admission to relation? And what is renaming besides credit to another’s life or self-determination of your own?

I wish we had this conversation more. But I understand why we don’t. To do so would be to…