Becoming My Self

“What is saving my life right now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”       

                                       - Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in The World

More and more human beings are come to appreciate, I think, what Barbara Brown Taylor is advocating here. The main objective of our lives on this earth is to be ourselves, to become ourselves. Of course, that journey takes a lifetime and we begin in a position of not knowing – not knowing who we are, who we are meant to be, where we are going, what we want to do with our lives, who we will share our lives with, and how do you do all of this anyway? Becoming ourselves not knowing all this stuff, makes the work hard and complicated and we are mostly inclined to give up.

Mind you, we are in some ways encouraged to give up. Why can't you be like the other girls or guys? Why can't you be like your older sister/brother? Whoa, you certainly didn't get any of that from my side of the family? Or (in disgust), you are so like your father. And, sometimes (in encouragement), you do that so well; you remind me of your mother when she was your age.

And then there is the whole school process which continues to be largely based on regurgitation. Very little encouragement to think for yourself. Offer your own insights; suggest your own answers; make your own mistakes; be your own imaginative, creative self. Is it any wonder that parents look at their tiny tots after a few days or weeks or months of school and bemoan the “older, wizened persons” they have become! Glad that they are learning but despairing over the naivete, simplicity, naturalness of life they seem to have to give up.

Then we get to be adults and wonder where the spontaneity and creativity have gone. Realize that we don't want to be nor do we have to be like everybody else. Come to appreciate that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

This growing up and becoming ourselves – and allowing all others to do the same - is not easy. But it is, I truly believe, what our earthly sojourn is supposed to be about.