The I That is Me
The two most important days of your life. “The day you were born, and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain
On Sunday (March 10, 2019) Porter asked me, “If I could be anything in life what would I be?” The question caught me off guard. I thought, “It is a bit late for me to make that decision.”
Porter Wolff, February 20, 2005
Porter and Dr Ackerman, February 13, 2022
The two most important questions of your life are, “who am I” and, “why am I here”. When those answers are known the “what will I be question” is easier to figure out.
Very few people are lucky enough to know what they want to be when they “grow up”. Those who do, also perhaps unknowingly, understand who they are and why they were born.
The rest of us would be well served to urgently set about the task of discovering who we are to become.
Today at church the bishop stood and said, “I am Bishop Nowlon”. But that is not who he is. He told the congregation his role and gave us a way to address him and to look him up in the church directory.
My name is not who I am.
When someone asks who you are the answer might be, “I am Scott Wolff’s son," or “Elise (Leavitt) Wolff is my mom”. We often define ourselves in terms of relationships. Our ancestry does tell us and others a lot about who we are, but our relationships only put who we are in context.
I am a business owner and an “old car guy” but I am not my occupation or avocation.
Who are you, a man or a woman? In today’s world, the answer to this question is often ambiguity, but my gender is not who I am.
My name and relationships and what I do are reflections of, and they are informed by, who I am, but they are not who I am.
I am a unique spirit, an eternal essence that came into this mortal realm, defenceless and innocent, accompanied by echos of another life. My unique spirit carries with it characteristics and attributes earned over eons.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
William Wordsworth
Mortality shapes, grinds away at, and adds to who I was. Though much of me is hard wired, I believe that I can still affect who I am and importantly determine the “meaning” of my life. Nikos Kazantzakis said, “You have your brush, you have your colours, you paint paradise, then in you go.”
We bring with us to this earth a pre-mortal essence or spirit or nature that is a mortal starting point. Perhaps the question should be “who am I becoming”. I have a choice.
Take a moment to write an “I am” statement. If you are not yet sure of who you are then write an “I am becoming” statement. This is an important first step in answering Porter’s question about what I would most like to be.
When I am working on a project I often run into problems that seem almost insurmountable. This happened when I was working on my canoe. I was ready to give up. Finally I came up with a solution that changed the project in a good way that I could not have envisioned when I first began cutting cedar strips. That happens often in my life.
When you embark on the project of “becoming” you have no idea how you will turn out. You will hit roadblocks that will force you to either quit or change direction. By continuing on, opportunities will open up to you that you could not possibly have imagined when you first began the project of “becoming”.
After overcoming a few problems you will realize that it is in overcoming the problems that we discover the unknown riches life has to offer. The worst thing we can do is not to start because we are uncertain of where we will end up. The second worst thing is to give up when the path forward seems impassable. A course correction or creative solution can lead us into an amazing world of opportunity that we could not have conceived of when we began the journey of becoming.
What is the show stopper in your life today that is holding you back from the amazing adventure that awaits you???????????????
So start “becoming” now by defining who you want to be. In the process you will discover bits and pieces of who you really are.
Make the statement of who you are becoming as if you are already that person.
“I am an inspiring, honest, loving, creative spirit son of God.”
The best way to “become” is to pick one of your desired attributes and work on it all day or even all week. “Just for today I will be honest in all that I do.” This week I will be aware of the problems that are eating away at me and take creative steps to find the opportunity they are concealing.
The process of becoming is a lifelong adventure. More correctly said, it is an eternal adventure.
The I that is me, you cannot see.
You only see, what you think is me.
The me that you see, will not always be.
But the I that is me, lives eternally.
When we have a purpose for life we will be much better equipped to handle the process of life.
Being and Doing https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2011/04/what-manner-of-men-and-women-ought-ye-to-be?lang=eng