Identity: Ideas or Real

Seventeen years after high school, I am still being schooled, a quiet evening stretched around us, sitting in a couch filled with the hum of soft conversations. Then, the question came, like a brick, surprise!

“Do you love me, or do you love the idea of me?”

The words settled between us, light but weighted, as if they carried more than they let on. I gave an answer—the kind that feels right in the moment, the kind that keeps the world steady. But as the night faded into silence ofcourse I am back home now and the conversations turned into echoes, the question refused to leave.

It followed me into the next morning, through my meetings, between the lines of my emails. It lodged itself somewhere deep, pressing into old spaces I thought I had long outgrown. And then, without warning, it turned inward. 5 months laters, I am still.

Do I love myself, or do I love the idea of me?

The question stretched back through time, threading itself through secondary school passage or corridor, I really cant say, lets be poshed and call it hallway and the versions of myself I had built along the way.

Flash back…. I am moving through school with books that weren’t mine, favors that had never been asked for but were always expected. People called my name, and I answered. Always. The nice guy. The one who never said no. It felt good, at first. Like purpose. Like belonging. But then, the laughter sometimes lasted just a little too long after I walked away. The party invitations never seemed to find their way to me, na just work. The weight of being useful started to feel suspiciously like the weight of being invisible.

Nice hadn’t been enough.

So, I rewrote myself.

A different year JSS 2, a same hallway, a different version of me. I said NO! The favors stopped, I say I no dey do. The laughter at my expense? That stopped too. I became deliberate. Measured. Selective with my words, distant with my presence. People no longer assumed I would say yes before they even asked. There was a quiet satisfaction in that, not the physical bully but the mental type, in the way the world reshaped itself around the edges of this new identity. I had built something, sculpted myself into someone who wouldn’t be overlooked. And I liked it.

Or did I?

Morning meetings. Project deadlines. Strategy decks. The mechanics of my life had changed, but the pattern felt familiar. Another role, another version of me carefully constructed to fit the space I occupied.

In the office, my voice carried weight. Decisions moved through me. I managed timelines, risks, expectations. People looked to me for direction, and I gave it with the ease of someone who had long since learned to play the part.

Efficiency was everything. Delegation, execution, results. But somewhere in the silence between tasks, in the spaces where the emails paused and the calls hadn’t yet begun, I caught glimpses of something else.

Was I leading, or performing leadership?

Was I growing, or just moving forward because motion looked like progress?

Did I love this work, this life I had built—or did I love the idea of who I was within it?

I thought about the boy I used to be, the one who had once carried books for everyone because it was easier to be needed than to be overlooked. The one who had later crafted a harder, sharper version of himself because respect felt safer than kindness.

Now, in strategy sessions, I spoke with certainty, but the weight of that question sat in my chest like an unbalanced scale.

Who was I without the role? Who was I without the expectation?

The world rewarded structure, strategy, efficiency. But identity—true identity—wasn’t something you could manage into existence. It wasn’t a well-executed project or a polished performance.

Do I love who I am, or do I love the version of me that makes sense to everyone else?

This time, I needed to face it. Not just the idea of the question, but the reality of it. For years, I had built versions of myself like carefully structured blueprints, each identity fitting neatly into the expectations of the moment. The helpful one. The strong one. The efficient one. The leader. But strip away the roles, the personas, the performances— what remained? Whose are you? Who are you?

I had spent years shaping my identity around what I did, how I was perceived, and who I needed to be for others. But identity doesn’t start with performance—it starts with belonging. Not belonging to a role, a title, or a perception, but belonging to something deeper, something unshakable. If identity is built on perception, it crumbles the moment perception shifts. But if identity is built on something unchanging, something constant, then no matter how life moves, the foundation remains.

So, whose am I? I am His. Before the roles, before the expectations, before the versions of myself I tried to perfect, I was already fully known, fully seen, and fully loved. The world asks, “What do you do?” but the real question is, “Whose are you?” Because the answer to that determines everything else.

And who am I? Not an idea, not a projection, not a performance. I am the sum of my experiences, my strengths, my flaws, my faith, my growth. Not a fixed image, but a living, breathing being, allowed to change, allowed to be imperfect, allowed to be real.

Loving myself doesn’t mean liking every part of my journey. It doesn’t mean ignoring growth or pretending I have arrived. It means recognizing that I don’t have to earn my worth. It means understanding that I was never meant to be an idea—I was meant to be whole.

So how do I embrace it? By choosing daily to exist beyond performance. By sitting in the discomfort of being real instead of seeking refuge in what is convenient. By letting go of the need to curate an image and instead choosing to live a life.

By replacing the question, “Am I enough?” with the truth that I already am. By remembering that my worth was never something to be built—it was something that was already given.

The difference between loving the idea of yourself and loving who you are is simple: One is exhausting. The other is freeing. One is built on conditions. The other is built on truth. One asks, “What do they see?” The other asks, “What is real?”

And so, I leave you with this: Whose are you? Who are you? Because when you answer those, everything else falls into place.

Binary Code Continues…