Does Every New Thing HAVE to Cause an Identity Crisis for Me?

So I've been looking into something recently that has put me in contact with people from my past -- high school, college, jobs, etc.

It's been fun.

And it's been a drag.

It's like my brain must be hard-wired to compare myself to other people. Or maybe I'm just susceptible to certain ideas of what I perceive as failure.

When I talk with people from the past, I notice how many of them I had fallen out of contact with. Of course I do realize that it's a two-way street, and some of them have fallen out of the circle due to choices they, not I, have made.

But still.

I'm already feeling relatively disconnected from any kind of social support system, other than my family of origin. And as I'm resurrecting some of these relationships, I'm asking myself, What happened? How did I lose contact with all these people? And why?

I don't want my life to be defined by all the things I have left -- churches, schools, colleges, communities, groups, friendships, teams. And who would define it that way other than me myself? Maybe others. Maybe not. But how do I define myself?

I guess it's one of those questions Rainer Maria Rilke talks about in this quote:

"...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

-Letters to a Young Poet

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