A dozen or so 5-year-olds walked in a line, approaching the classroom at the back corner of the massive school complex. It was the second day of kindergarten, after all the first-day jitters had gone away. I was being brought by the folks from my supplemental “kindergarten plus” program that ran in the first half of the day (my town still hadn't mandated full-day kindergarten).

I stared at my feet as I walked; I didn't want to fall on this novel terrain. I was new to the bunch—I had just moved from Alabama a few months prior. New Jersey was, well, new. All of my associations were made away from here. I wasn't scared—or at least, not any more scared than I usually was with everything. I was just uncertain. I knew that I didn't know much.

As we passed the classrooms of the older grades, I thought about how I would be just like them soon. Soon I would be taking tests and learning about things I didn't yet know existed. I imagined bringing my four-leaf clover that I found in the playground to my desk for good luck (I never did that; I was too afraid of losing it).

I wished I knew what this place would bring me. Everything was in front of me. I wished that I could talk to my older self. What would my 18-year-old self want to tell me, if he could? What would I want to know? What would I learn in these next years of life? Of course, I never found out until I lived through them. I couldn't even conceptualize who that person would be. In that current moment, I only had myself. I could not help myself.

Or so I thought. I've realized that ever since that day, I have been in conversation with myself. My identity split in two: the idea of who I have been and the idea of who I want to be. Which one was really “me”? Have I been shedding my skin to reveal my inner ideal self? Or am I just using this persona of my future self to transform myself?

Things got a bit more complicated when my libido began to emerge. It was foreign yet personal. There was something inside of myself that conflicted with my vision of my future self, yet it was something I could not change. I was not my future self. As I came to incorporate my libido into my self-concept, it brought a new question: was this always a part of me, even before I knew of it? This led to the frightening realization that I did not, and perhaps could not, truly know myself. I had to be unraveled.

When I was 18, I watched some old tapes that my parents took of me back in Alabama. This was the closest I could come to having that conversation across time. I could not say anything to that child I saw on my television, of course. But if I could, what would I tell him?

As I searched myself for the answers, the more I felt disconnected from him. I realized that since that day, through all of my transformations, I thought the 5-year-old was still in my mind. And in some ways, he was; parts of him were in my authentic self that stayed protected from. But when I watched at this child on the screen, I did not see myself anymore. He said and did things I would not say or do. And of course, he could not have the thoughts I had now. He was not more authentically me than I was now. I had not uncovered myself. And yet, I had not created myself either. Something else was happening.

I had been in conversation with myself. The self I have been and the self I want to be—they have had to negotiate. As each learns about himself, the other must adapt or be suppressed. What does it mean to be authentic in such a dialectic?

There's a famous parable about a group of blind men who come across an elephant for the first time. They each touch different parts and thus disagree on what the elephant is. If they worked together, recognizing their limited scopes, they might eventually come to a consensus. Am I the elephant or the ones touching it?

What would I tell my 5-year-old self, if I could? I would tell him that life doesn't get any easier, that adults are just grown-up kids. I would tell him that he only gets to live once, and to try things while he can, even if he's scared or ashamed. I would tell him that he can change, that he is not who he was yesterday or who he'll be tomorrow—he's not even who he thinks he is right now. I would tell him that learning is the best thing in the universe, and to not let school ruin it for him. I would tell him that there's no real way to mess up life, that there are no rulebooks for anything. All of that might be a little too heavy for a 5-year-old though.