A Star Without a Name
When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.Taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.That’s how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.—Rumi
If we were to meet at a party, I’d tell you a few things about me: My name is Rachel Astarte. I am a holistic psychotherapist, transformational life coach, author, educator, shamanic practitioner, mother, voice-over artist, native New Yorker, one-time Poet Laureate of Bucks County (Pennsylvania), comedy aficionado, ecopoliticalactivist, and a few other roles and titles.
What did I describe to you? My self—or at least a few titles that I hold. I’m sure you have your own. But what does that mean?
At age nine or ten, I read How to be Your Own Best Friend, A Conversation with Two Psychoanalysts by Mildred Newman & Bernard Berkowitz.
This book changed my life.
I saw that I was unique and that I could turn to myself for happiness and companionship. I didn’t need to hinge my self-worth on how others related to me. This came in handy as a kid living in a rural village in Upstate New York your closest neighbor was a couple of dairy farms away. It also came in handy as a single thirty-something trying to navigate the dating scene in NYC.
Around this thirty-something time, I began to take a closer look at what the self was. What my self was, in particular: If I never found partner, would that be okay with me? Or did it mean there was something wrong with me?
I had to be ready to spend the rest of my life with myself alone. And I had to make that okay. I had to. What other choice did I have?
What is the Self?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the self as a person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.
This is one of my favorite paradoxes: We cannot be a full self without an other. We need this reflexive interplay in order to find our place in the world.
Self and Other
There’s a lot of crossover, there. Yes, I’m separate from you—on a physical level, anyway. But that doesn’t mean my self is not influenced by your self. We are nearly always reflecting on the Other around us. What are you doing? Should I be doing that? See? Crossover. We’re trying to fit in with the other even though we are separate from it.
The Purpose of Labels
We categorize, then, using roles and labels—you read some of mine—in order to make sense of the beings around us. Some labels are given to us by others, some we give ourselves: woman, man, non-binary, mother, father, daughter, son, lover, friend, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, law-abiding citizen, writer, dancer, attorney, tech guru, guy who gets his coffee from the same deli every morning at 8 a.m.
We narrow ourselves to a cluster of details. Some of that is just fine, but we also need to ask ourselves:
Are we living a list of labels/roles that keep us from being our highest self?
For example, when you hear the word Doctor, what do you picture? This isn’t your doctor, I’m referring to; I’m talking about the role, the title: What does Doctor look like? How is Doctor dressed? How does Doctor behave? What are some things you could imagine Doctor doing in their free time? What are some things that might seem unacceptable to you. As in, you can’t picture Doctor doing that! Wearing that! Saying that! Smoking that! Whatever it is…
These ideas are formed over time by repetitive impressions formed by the society and culture we live in. And they affect us once we begin to integrate them.
What does it mean to be a mother? A lover? A friend? A workaholic? A caregiver?
When we think of these roles, do we see ourselves? Our true selves? Or do we feel we need to live up to the general definition of what those roles are? In other words, one might ask: How does a Man act? Do I, as a man, do that? Does that feel right in my belly? Does that suit my life?
Some of us never even think to ask these questions.
What happens when we ask and answer them honestly—and, as a result, live that choice? We become our highest self. Our True Self.
What is this highest self or True Self?
It is the core of our being, the part that lives in right relationship to our connection to Source. We have one foot in eternity and the other in impermanence. It’s what Osho called Zorba the Buddha: To be in this world—living fully, snuffling up all the sensory experiences of this life—but not of it.
I invite you to make a list of the roles and labels that define your life.
Ask yourself how many of these are in alignment with your True Self and how many feel more like they’ve been randomly stuck to you like the frayed appendage in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
Where appropriate, take a few moments to redefine a role or label that doesn’t sit right with you.
Here's one example from my life: When I held the label of Wife, it never seemed to fit right with my soul. I hated the implications that, having donned this moniker, I was supposed to step into a whole new way of being. Dutiful. Content. Complete. It wasn’t that I didn’t like being a partner; I simply felt that wife had a cultural and societal feel to it that didn’t resonate with my true nature. Especially when I listened to married male stand-up comedians rail on about their balls (and chains). Once I redefined what wife meant to me—steady, loving, present, human—I was better able to accept the word and my honest expression of it.
This is not to say that labels and roles are inherently bad. What matters is that we take the time to make them our own. Only then can we meet in community and contribute our authentic experience of each role or label with one another. Perhaps we can even expand the meaning and essence of these roles and labels by bringing our true selves into consideration.
It is true; we came here as stars without names. Our anonymous, Source-connected lights move jubilantly across our life. That’s why it’s vital that any names we do choose to take on resonate with us fully. We owe it to our true nature and to the communities in which we live and to which we contribute—just by being ourselves.