Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start
We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvellously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the possessions that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and showing-off, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic feeling that keeps us smaller and contained?
Here's how you could be yourself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with friends; the loss of people without whom you could not live, that left you reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty. Oh, yeah, and whenever you could, for as long as you could, you should throw away the scales and the sugar.
When I was a young man, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he'd make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he'd imagined, he'd paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn't, he was one step closer to finding out what it was. You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.
I can't tell you what your next action will be, but you should involve a full stop. You have to stop living unconsciously, as if you have all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day you have to stop. You should began consciously to break the rules. This I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as an essential act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen.
Here's how you could be yourself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with friends; the loss of people without whom you could not live, that left you reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty. Oh, yeah, and whenever you could, for as long as you could, you should throw away the scales and the sugar.
When I was a young man, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he'd make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he'd imagined, he'd paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn't, he was one step closer to finding out what it was. You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.
I can't tell you what your next action will be, but you should involve a full stop. You have to stop living unconsciously, as if you have all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day you have to stop. You should began consciously to break the rules. This I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as an essential act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen.
Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. I don't know all that many things that are positively true, but I do know two things for sure: you are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a motivating or moral boosting card. It will not be the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, and friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days, like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and body with goofy greatness.
Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great tight spot exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There's always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. With your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears dry. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipelines. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes. The self that is revealed in divine energy, your own. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the doze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are....
Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great tight spot exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There's always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. With your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears dry. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipelines. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes. The self that is revealed in divine energy, your own. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the doze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are....
