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# a simple question
- URL: https://the-stardust-journal-press.ghost.io/a-simple-question/
- Published: 2025-05-22T11:40:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-01T16:51:04.000Z
- Author: Daniel Rutberg
- Tags: poetry, beyond, Buddhist, Journey, Who Am I, #Migrated-1782924600586, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-01 12:50

Seven decades in, when asked to peer inside  
and ruminate about my being  
with the phrase *Who am I?*  
I peel away who I have been to others:  
“Pops” to the grandkids,  
“Oh Danny,” to my dear bride.  
Then proudly offer up the legacy of my profession—  
 all aligned to *Tikkun Olam*—  
and gleefully describe the joys I’ve taken up in my dotage:  
 capturing sacred feelings in words,  
 the world’s beauty in what once was film,  
 now rendered in zeros and ones.  
When I have stripped all this away,  
what remains is the journey I have taken up  
since she left to join the others:  
the journey along the Eightfold Path,  
with signposts of the Four Noble Truths.  
And the answer to the question  
appears to me as if I had just awoken from a dream.  
My soul, for this moment, is awash in the river of human experience—  
and as the current sweeps us past the lotus flowers  
unfolding in the morning sun,  
through the white-water rapids, crashing down the heights of a waterfall,  
and along the rock-strewn banks of daily life,  
I know that soon—not too soon, but soon enough—  
this soul within will once again join  
the ocean of infinite souls.  
So when asked *Who am I,* the answer is:  
*I am becoming.*