Your identity is like a car.
Sometimes we have to borrow someone else’s when we are young.
Sometimes they break down and we have to maintain and restore them. Sometimes they suffer accident or collision. Sometimes when they are poorly maintained, they fail to start.
Every dilapidated or abandoned car was once valued and new.
They can never be truly ours if we inherited the wanting of them wholly from someone else. Some are cherished, and some are for show. They define us at times in our lives, and at other times they become trivial in the context of what we are devoted to. Some are manual, some are automatic. Some are customised, and some are just a way for us to get from point A to point B.
Some of us always have our eye on something new, always chasing comfort, and some of us find charm in the old and tried.
But we cannot always hitch a ride and still come to the interesting and remote places we want to explore in this life and we cannot be chauffeured everywhere. If we are going somewhere meaningful, they help us to cover the big distances, but we always have to park them and reach the actual destination on foot.
We need to know how to fill our own fuel and check and change our own oil. It is our job to make sure it is roadworthy, to keep the windshield clear, the rearview mirrors well adjusted. No matter how well we keep its care, we can still always get a flat, and we need to keep a spare, and have the skills and the grit to change it at an inconvenient time and in an unforgiving place. And then the wisdom to repair the flat at our earliest convenience.
No amount of suspension can make up for a bad stretch of road.
We need to know when to slow down or how to handle the tight corners at speed and we need to know how to behave in traffic, and how to share the road.
We may need help with repair or tuning, but it’s our job to keep it clean, even if we pay for help. And we need to be prepared to upgrade or downgrade as our journeys demand. Not every kind of car can cover every kind of terrain. And sometimes, there are places we can get to, only if we are prepared to get out and walk. Cars can only go where the road allows. And no matter how bright the headlights, we cannot see around blind corners.
You are not your identity, but your identity is a reflection of you. You cannot always afford an upgrade so you might as well invest in maintenance and care.
In apocalyptic movies, the first thing people abandon is their cars.