My First Tattoo

The idea for getting a tattoo may have begun simply as a desire to have one, but it has grown into something so much more than that.  I went through a time in which I was struggling to figure out who I was, and you can see it in my essays, I felt disconnected and lost.  I was struggling to identify the problem, much less identify the solution.  It is probably a natural part of getting older, of leaving childhood and entering adulthood, that you are faced at a faster and faster pace questions of values, to the point that you lose your own confidence in what is good and the picture of who you believe you should be gets smeared.  I had lost my childhood self, and I had no idea who I was or who I wanted to be and I was becoming increasingly afraid that I would float through life in this purgatory of identity.  So, I tried to write myself out of it.  I began examining my intangible and often unprompted feelings of anxiety, which unfortunately showed me just how unhappy I was.  It is one thing to be in a dark place, it is completely another to admit to yourself that is what you are. 

I think that this realization only made me feel lower, because I was viewing my real self rather than my illusions.  But out of this darkness came a light, an idea, a lens that I could view the world through moving forward.  And the more I wrote, the more I realized I had found a structure on which I could hang the different parts of my identity.  I had journeyed inward fractured and had returned not finished, but whole.  And as such, I felt like a new person.  I felt very much like I hadn’t been anybody in particular for the past few years, maybe ever, but suddenly I had self-definition, and it was one that I could be proud of.  It was the most drastic change I had ever experienced in my life, a complete shift in perspective.  The way I viewed the world and interacted with it was completely new.  I felt that such a dramatic shift in my internal self seemed almost incomplete without some change in my external self.  As if my external self represented somebody different, my old self, as if my external appearance was a lie. 

And then, a quote came to me that summed up everything that I had been saying, succinct yet profound and beautiful to me.  I knew the instant I wrote it that it was the tattoo that I wanted to get.  It felt like it was the quote, and therefore the tattoo, that would complete me.  Just like I had not felt internally whole until I had discovered the ideas behind the words of the tattoo, I did not feel externally whole until I embodied them physically.  It felt like the real me was the person with the tattoo, and this body without it was merely a place holder.

Clearly a tattoo is symbolic, that is the very nature of a tattoo, but for me it is not merely what the tattoo explicitly represents but the actual act of getting the tattoo that is also extremely symbolic for me.  It has many levels.  The first is that this tattoo is not merely a signpost of a significant event in my life, but it is a beacon that shines towards the future.  What the quote represents is an idea that is growing as I grow.  Already it doesn’t mean what it did when I wrote it, it means more.  As my ideas grow, so does the meaning of the quote.  The words will be over my heart, making them in a way a doorway into my soul.  The ideas, when I discovered them, were like a doorway into another realm.  And the more I journey there, the deeper understanding of those ideas I get.  While sometimes my ideas may contradict each other, each reversal of perspective on an issue comes from a place of more nuanced understanding.  Yet, the gateway does not change, the portal ideas remain the same. 

The quote, this tattoo, is that portal, it is a window that constantly shows exactly where I am within the realm of ideas I have decided to make my own.  It is always a representation of exactly who I am and what I am about, even as that identity shifts, stretches and retracts in different directions.  I am putting something on my body that is as dynamic as I am.  My tattoo and I will literally and figuratively grow older and wiser together, like two childhood friends, like two lovers, or better yet one being.

Also, the application of the tattoo is somewhat symbolic.  Those hours in the shop will be a microcosm of what I went through to arrive there in the first place.  It will be a journey through pain to the creation of something positive, the journey through pain to solidify my identity.  It will be the pain of metamorphosis, the pain of growth, and it will leave its mark, but that mark will be beautiful because of what it represents.  I don’t know…it’s tough to explain why I want this tattoo as badly as I do.  It certainly isn’t truly necessary, because ideas never need to be embodied physically, only mentally.  But it also isn’t just a tattoo, it isn’t just to embody a tough guy persona or just an attempt to make who I am on the inside match the persona that would be presented externally by a tattoo.

It is the other way around: I already am the man with that tattoo, whether or not I have it, and will be whether or not I ever get it.  But, I think there is a beauty in the gesture, I think there is a beauty in the words, and I think it is an expression of commitment.  Every day I will look in the mirror, and see not only my body but the window into my heart, and judge my actions accordingly.  I will know, with increasing depth, the way I want to live each day.  It will keep me honest and help me continue to move forward, deeper, broader.  Every day I will see in three simple sentences the philosophy, the application, and the broader results of that application.  The recipe for a happy heart will lie forever over my own.