“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
- George Bernard ShawI was thinking about this quote today and I agree with it more and more as I get older. The idea of "finding oneself" is so passive. It leaves so much to fate or some imagined and preordained personality. It implies that the person you will become is set in stone and your experiences have nothing at all to do with it. You have nothing to do with it. You could spend your whole life stumbling around and then suddenly happen upon some complete, happy, fulfilled person.
Creating oneself however, is a purposeful act. You are in control. We create ourselves by deciding who we want to be and then working to become that person. We create ourselves through the decisions we make, the things we value and the experiences we have. Creating oneself is work.
Personally, I much prefer being in the drivers seat.
(By the way, this post earns me another badge! The write-all-about-it badge:
1 comment:
This makes a lot of sense. For a big part of my life, I was just wandering through it, letting things happen to me. It was only when I started actually thinking about my choices, and being the one in charge, that I became a happy person, from within myself.
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