Deciding who we want to be PART 1

What I want with this post is to encourage you to think a bit about who you are, who you want to be, what you fill your life with and whether this represents who you truly want to be or not. I sort of had a rude awakening a few years back, when I realized how much of my life that was not really me. And I can hardly be alone in this. Yes, I know that ultimately I’m none of these things. I know that deep inside we are simply love and everything else is just add-ons. But knowing this, I don’t think that it can hurt to make more conscious choices with regards to our attitudes and what we fill our lives with. Besides, whether we do it consciously or not, we make choices all the time. 

I think that the best way to approach the question of identity, is to have some conscious sense of it, without being attached to it or confusing it with who one truly is.

I will drop a part of this series now and then. I of course want to do something other than just talk about who I want to be here. But since thinking deeply about who one really wants to be will be quite a project, I don’t think that a series from start to finish, with no other posts in between will be any fun for anyone. Not even for me And I want to take my time to think about these things anyway and not just rush through them. There are so many aspects of life to consider.

It might seem a little strange to still thinking about finding who you are and your place in the world when you’re basically forty. Or maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. I know that I’m not happy just picking a role and then play it. Why should I even bother thinking about this? Why not just go ahead and live life? Because for most of my life I haven’t really felt like me. It’s not as if I’ve always thought of it this way. But it took a long time for me to take a step back and consider what values I truly treasure. What personality traits I admire. What things in life that truly make me feel happy and fulfilled. What do I truly like in this or that area? When I really listen to my emotions, what to they tell me about my life and my choices? How do I want to look? What kinds of clothes do I like to wear? And, perhaps even more important, what things that I currently fill my life with don’t represent who I truly want to be. What things do I want to let go of?

The thing is that I don’t think that most people really, truly think about these things. I can’t believe that most people’s biggest dream is to work themselves to death so that they can consume, make money off of hurting other people, or drink themselves half-unconscious and make fools out of themselves every weekend. Not that everyone does this. But loads of people do, and these are just some of the most blatant examples. And at least when it comes to getting drunk every weekend, this was something that I myself engaged in when I was younger. And nowadays I see it mostly as just a huge waste of time, health and energy. 

The point that I’m trying to make can be summed up in three questions (forgive me for repeating myself a little bit): Why do we do the things that we do? Do we do them because they are what our hearts desire? Or have our lives and that which they contain sort of just happened to us? 

Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash