Today I went for a run with the cross country team. (The word "run" is used very loosely here.) A friend and I were jogging in the back and she was kind of having a rough time of it. After about a mile she stopped to walk and said, "Sorry. I'm just not a runner."
I thought about that for a minute and then I told her, "You don't have to be a runner, you can just be a person who runs." She laughed but I really meant it. We're so focused on trying to define ourselves with one word, something we want others to see us as. We want to be dancers or runners, obsessive Pinterest users or Facebookers, artists or writers, musicians or bookworms. The list stretches endlessly, and while our minds are preoccupied with picking exactly the right description we forget to just be ourselves.
I'm at a time in my life where most of the people I associate with are so worried about their own identity; who they are, who they're going to be. I've found that people, (and I'm definitely one of them), tend to over think things, to obsess about what other people expect them to do. Every one of us has built our own little world and we view it from the eyes of others. For instance, when I'm around my friends I worry about whether my hair looks all right and I don't dance around or sing at the top of my lungs even though I really want to, because that's not who I am to most of them. In my head I've created this identity, this person that I want others to see, and if parts of me don't fit into the boundaries I've created I don't do them around other people.
But the point is that this fake person I am a lot of the time isn't me. The kids in my orchestra class see a Violinist, but to me, I am a person who likes to play the violin, among other things. I run, I play the piano, I write, I read, I sing, I watch movies, I do homework. But all that doesn't mean that I am a Running, Piano-Playing, Writing, Reading, Singing, Movie-Watching, Homework Fanatic. Those things I do do not define who I am because it's not who I am inside, and the same is true of all of us.
We can't all do everything, we can't all be everything, and not one of us can do everything well. But that doesn't matter. My friend that I run with may not be the fastest or the best runner, and that's okay because she's the best flutist I've ever heard in my entire life. I might not be the best blogger (yet), but that's okay, because I have other talents, and I know that I'll get better. Maybe we won't excel at everything, or even anything, but it doesn't matter, as long as we keep trying. All we need to do is be a little better at being ourselves. You might like to dance and I like to read, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends. It only means that we're different, but we're also the same, because we're all people, and we're all children of God, and if anything is going to define us, that should be it.
I thought about that for a minute and then I told her, "You don't have to be a runner, you can just be a person who runs." She laughed but I really meant it. We're so focused on trying to define ourselves with one word, something we want others to see us as. We want to be dancers or runners, obsessive Pinterest users or Facebookers, artists or writers, musicians or bookworms. The list stretches endlessly, and while our minds are preoccupied with picking exactly the right description we forget to just be ourselves.
I'm at a time in my life where most of the people I associate with are so worried about their own identity; who they are, who they're going to be. I've found that people, (and I'm definitely one of them), tend to over think things, to obsess about what other people expect them to do. Every one of us has built our own little world and we view it from the eyes of others. For instance, when I'm around my friends I worry about whether my hair looks all right and I don't dance around or sing at the top of my lungs even though I really want to, because that's not who I am to most of them. In my head I've created this identity, this person that I want others to see, and if parts of me don't fit into the boundaries I've created I don't do them around other people.
But the point is that this fake person I am a lot of the time isn't me. The kids in my orchestra class see a Violinist, but to me, I am a person who likes to play the violin, among other things. I run, I play the piano, I write, I read, I sing, I watch movies, I do homework. But all that doesn't mean that I am a Running, Piano-Playing, Writing, Reading, Singing, Movie-Watching, Homework Fanatic. Those things I do do not define who I am because it's not who I am inside, and the same is true of all of us.
We can't all do everything, we can't all be everything, and not one of us can do everything well. But that doesn't matter. My friend that I run with may not be the fastest or the best runner, and that's okay because she's the best flutist I've ever heard in my entire life. I might not be the best blogger (yet), but that's okay, because I have other talents, and I know that I'll get better. Maybe we won't excel at everything, or even anything, but it doesn't matter, as long as we keep trying. All we need to do is be a little better at being ourselves. You might like to dance and I like to read, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends. It only means that we're different, but we're also the same, because we're all people, and we're all children of God, and if anything is going to define us, that should be it.
You are SO right!
ReplyDeleteWell said! Keep writing. You've got some talent.
ReplyDelete