What The Left Gets Right: Getting your Act Together Is Hard

I'm going to start my series "What I agree with on The Left still" by talking about identity. The Left is currently hypnotized by Identity, so much so that they are sadly quite blind to the aspects of identity that are very small and will shrink your life if you focus on them too much: namely, 1) you defining yourself with no one's input or feedback but with a simply decree or demand. and 2) this world--heck even your own life--is not about you, and living as though either of them are will make you bitter, contracted, selfish and listless. Ask me how I know.

But what The Left gets right is that identity formation is really, really hard. I don't mean any of the things you can't change: your race (though why is it that you can change your gender if both race and gender are social constructs? Just asking.), your parents, your biology and therefore your sex (and if sex and gender are different, why would changing your hardware affect your gender so much as to undergo that massive amounts of potentially irreversible risks to do so? Just asking), the time in history you were born, etc. I mean what you're going to do with your life, how you're going to contribute to your family, community, society.

Our society is so bereft of rituals that mean anything of substance, rites of passage that mark reaching levels of maturity and ceremonies that signal to people their community sees, values, knows and is willing to challenge them to facilitate their stepping into their calling. Constructing a life of meaning and conducting it in a way that preserves and transmits it beyond your time is damn hard. I'm almost 37 and I feel so far like a failure despite what has felt like more than two decades of intense work and focus on building meaningful relationships, how to find meaning, what makes life meaningful, and how I can best steward this one, short life I was given.

Because of the unrelenting void of rites of passage and the persistent need for meaning, gender transitioning seems to have taken shape as a major accomplishment in life. But you still have to figure out what you're going to do with your life, how you're create meaning and healthy relationships, what legacy you're going to leave. And that, The Left is right, is grueling work.