Being what you want to be

Are you the things you have or the things you do? Or are you something more - is the person who acquires things and experiences things somehow more than the things that person wants?

Knowing yourself is a lifelong endeavour. Most of us get glimpses of who we want to be - sometimes in an achievement and sometimes in a quiet moment alone and sometimes in the reflection we see when someone looks at us. I have been blessed with someone who frequently holds a mirror up so that I can see things I would otherwise have missed about myself. Those things do not always make me comfortable. They are always the beginning of making me stronger.

The poet Yeats once said that people have to choose between creating perfect lives and creating perfect work. Most of us do not make that kind of choice. We choose imperfection in who we are, in what we acquire, and in what we do. We choose imperfection because it is inevitable and because it sometimes surprises us. It sometimes offers us the view in the mirror we would otherwise have missed.

Imagine you acquire all the things you want to acquire. Imagine you achieve the things you want to achieve. If you do not also imagine the person you are shaping through those experiences, what will be missing from the life you shape through intention and attention?

Comments

rico said…
I see that we are after the same "fruit" in people. Please continue...

rico
http://beingwhoyouwanttobe.blogspot.com/
3:59 am
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