Being Yourself

Does it always take people until their fifties and sixties to understand the importance of being themselves?  Why does self doubt plague so many of us? I suppose there are some who never suffer from a lack of self confidence, but that is scary too!  A certain amount of...let's call it self reflection, at least keeps us humble and fights off self righteousness.  Anyway.... 

My daughter once dated a young man who hoped to be a writer.  Trying to establish a rapport with him, I would ask if he had read a certain author or what he thought about a certain book.  He surprised me by saying that he didn't read much.  He said that he didn't want to muddy his original thoughts and ideas with the ideas of others. How interesting, but it made perfect sense.  If he had a original story in him, he didn't need to tell it in any voice other than his own.  What would have happened to Pride and Prejudice if Jane Austen had tried to write it using the voice of one of her contemporaries, the Marquis De Sade!! The very idea makes me shutter!!   

And what if Claude Monet had tried to channel Michelangelo when he painted the waterlilies at Giverny?  Michelangelo painted an impressive ceiling, but Monet's ideas started the Impressionism movement. 

At a recent Bible study, we were discussing Paul.  After God spoke to him on the road to Damascus, showed him the error of his ways, and laid on his heart the calling to preach the Gospel, Paul didn't seek out the other disciples to ask how to preach or what to say.  Instead he went off to be alone so that he could make sense of what God had told him and  find his own voice for spreading the Word. 

          "But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before I was..." 
                                                                                                                Galatians 1: 15-17

 God chose Paul because of Paul's background and experiences.  Paul's perspective and point of view were useful to God, and God didn't want Paul to mess things up by acting like Peter, James, or John.  God needed Paul to be Paul.

Jane Austen needed to be Jane Austen.  Claude Monet needed to be Claude Monet.  And God needs you to be you!! Only then can He accomplish what He has had in mind for you from the beginning.

Love you and your originality,

Shelli

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

 ~e.e. cummings, 1955

You were born an original. Don't die a copy. 

~John Mason