Thisness & Brokenness

Who am I? What makes me who I am?

These questions have been asked all throughout time, and were some of the biggest questions for philosophers. Philosophers like Aristotle and Augustine would tell you that what makes you who you are is your beingness, the fact that you were created human is what distinguishes you. While this is true, we are humans and not animals or plants, there is still more to it. There is still a distinctiveness among human beings.

John Duns Scotus, a 13th century Franciscan philosopher and theologian, came up with an idea to solve this uniqueness, an idea called haecceity, or thisness. Thisness at its basics is what makes us ourselves, what makes us unique and different from everyone else. Falling under the principle of individuation, thisness helps us to be who each of us is at its fullness. Our thisness coincides with our beingness, telling us that you cannot have one without the other. There is no thisness without beingness and no beingness without thisness. We can continue to think about this through our gifts and talents. I am an artist, but I am not a professional athlete. Therefore being an artist is my thisness in some form.

I believe that this notion of thisness is very important, as it does help us a lot with understanding who we really are. But thisness can also spark a lot of questions. Going back to what I said earlier, my thisness is being an artist, I am an artist but not a professional athlete. This is good because I know I am an artist, but why am I not a professional athlete? Why was I made this way and not that way? If we start thinking of ourselves in this way, we begin to self identify with being imperfect. I can’t do everything in my thisness, I’m not good at everything, therefore I am broken. Thus our thisness coincides with brokenness.

To help with this notion of brokenness, I like to look at the ancient Japanese art form of kintsugi, the mending of broken tea ware by filling in its cracks with gold. It is through this art form that the tea ware is seen as more beautiful after it has been broken than before, because being broken is part of its story. If we think of our thisness as being our gold, since our thisness is in a way the goldness of who we are, it cannot show through us unless we first recognize that we are broken. Thus it is not until we accept our brokenness as part of who we are and our story that we can be who we are at our fullness. I need to accept that I am not a professional athlete so that I can live as an artist at its fullness.

I am an artist and not a professional athlete, and that is ok. I am not a lot of things, and this is how I was made, out of the free will of God. God could have made us any way that he wanted, and he made us individually the way we are, out of love. God knows who we are and still loves us first. He does not see who we aren’t, just the beauty that we are. We are beautiful just as we are, because we are living as we are.