A friend looked at me with either disbelief or sudden comprehension (they are hard to distinguish) and said to me, “You are everything!” I laughed because that’s silly. The list of things I’m not is much longer than the list of things I am. But I have been thinking, on this 2-week trip out of the Costa Rican jungle into the Mennonite Meccas of the USA, about all the things I am–and it’s a lot of things. Diverse things. Often opposites.

I’ve been thinking about Living Theatre—how Life is theatre and Theatre is life. All the world is, in fact, a stage. And I Iove that. I was a college theatre major many lives ago, and although by all appearances I walked away from it, do not be fooled: I never walk away from anything. I love being a shape shifter, being a little bit of everything. A statement like that make me seem insincere if you don’t take the time to hear what I mean. So, listen.

You can be a lot of things without being insincere. I am never insincere. All of the personas, all of the characters, are real. I just perhaps enjoy this more than most—am able to delight in the scene/language/wardrobe/script(language) changes that drive most people crazy and make them feel that if they cannot always be one person, they are therefore incorrect. Why? Who says? Why be one thing when you can be all the things?

I know. You’re normal and I’m, um, a little strange. It drives you crazy when your life tries to require you be somebody you’re not. I know. Me? I don’t resist it. I take it as a challenge. A new role to play. New lines to learn. A new costume. And I am curious. I want to know everything. From the inside out. If you learn the language, believe your lines as you deliver them, wear the costume convincingly, you will be amazed how people let you in. I have learned this.

In my daily life at the beach in Tamarindo, I feel ageless—neither young nor old nor in need of setting myself at a particular place on the spectrum: undefined. I slip between 3 languages on a normal day which is like having 3 passports to 3 planets. Which one is my home? All of them. Or none? I couldn’t choose. I cruise around on a bicycle in cut-off jean shorts and flipflops (if I can remember them) with a notebook, a baseball cap and sometimes a raincoat in my backpack because you never know. I don’t even think about it until I shape-shift into the farm girl from Manheim, Pennsylvania and then I realize that the things I have in common with other women my age in this place are…well, there are some. Most of them involve reminiscing. Or baking. But what’s not to love about that?

The other night in my journal, I made a list of the things I am. You should try this. It’s an awesome exercise in self-awareness. And then you get to practice being all the things to the absolute best of your ability. Don’t try to shorten the list. Add to it. Deepen. Here’s a truth worth pondering: Acting is acting; lying is lying, but acting is not lying. If you don’t know what I mean, don’t worry. Keep living. You’ll figure it out.

Why anyone else would want to read this amount of my navel-gazing introspection I swear I do not know. But, you’re welcome. You can always shut me up by clicking on the little X in the corner.

This is my List of Things I Am:

the daughter
the grandmother
the step-mother
the good wife
the widow
the American ex-pat
la casi Tica
la quasi Italiana
the nurse (never by profession, but…)
the Pennsylvania Mennonite
the farm girl
the surfer
a single woman
the prodigal child
the cloistered nun
the writer
the student
the teacher
the one who is listening
the maker of maps
the clairvoyant
the wanderer
the stubborn one
the timid one
the guardian
the phoenix

Every day I get up and be some of the things—which ever ones are required of me. These personas are all the more clear when I travel to other parts/places of my life like I am doing right now. I am a human onion. Who, honestly, is not?

The lines blur between Life and Theatre. They melt into the one thing of being absolutely sincere in the moment where you are, and not shying away from any moments because you don’t know your lines or you don’t have a perfect costume. The more things you are, the more diverse moments of sincerity you may participate in.

This is what I’m talking to myself about today on the last day of my trip as a snowstorm approaches.