There was a spiritual master in India the name of which I don’t remember. His teaching was very simple. It consisted of only three words that a disciple needed to meditate on: “Who am I.” Just these three words, just this question, nothing else, no thoughts about God, no religious rituals. This was the way he himself achieved what one calls a “spiritual realization”.

What has reminded me of this laconic teaching? Today I had the first session in the writing camp and I had to introduce myself to other young writers. I began my short speech by saying: “Hi, I’m Nana.” Then I suddenly realized that it was strange to identify myself with a single word. Moreover, it is strange that the phrases “I am” and “My name is” are synonymous. Are we really our names? Do our names actually describe us? More specifically, does my name describe me, my name – four letters, two identical syllables?

This might sound funny now, but there was a time when I was proud of my name. I was told that I had been named after St. Nana – the first christian queen of Georgia. My name was a rare one and it was also the name of a historical figure. Then, as I grew up, it struck me that my grandmother was called Nana too. Since there is a tradition in Georgia to name children after their grandparents, I was most probably named after my grandma rather than after St. Nana. This discovery made me upset – it turned out that I was merely a part of the tradition, a part of something so common and usual in Georgia.

My disappointment transformed into excitement, when we had a class about Georgian Mythology at school. I found out that Nana was the Goddess of sun in ancient Georgia, in the age of paganism. We do still have a chant dedicated to Goddess Nana. The chant is called “Iavnana” and is currently used as a lullaby. In the past, however, people used to sing it when a child had a chickenpox or measles. According to the belief, the spirits called “Batonebi”, the companions of Goddess Nana caused these illnesses. So, through chanting the song people asked Nana and the spirits to have the mercy upon the child and let him or her recover from the disease.

My name, therefore, connects and reconciles two conflicting cultures: the pagan and the Christian one. And here’s how it describes me – I am the person of conflicts, the person of controversies. If you can imagine two opposing forces combined in one body, that’s me. But still: there’s something that transcends the conflict. That “something” always remains beyond words, as the complexity of a human being surpasses the complexity of language. Maybe, that’s why I remember the teaching of the above-mentioned Guru, even though I have forgotten his name. Maybe his name is insignificant, as it wouldn’t characterize him anyway, would it?