Cut and Paste & Copycatting...

To be honest, as I have an opportunity to look back upon my short life, I think I've spent a good bit of it copy-catting, as little children call it. You learn to do this from the earliest of years, before you know there are things like "age" and "years" you're being measured by. You take in what you see, hear and sense around you, and unknowingly mimic the things that get attention and affirmation, seeking to avoid/coverup the stuff that doesn't make the best impression.

By the time you realize what is happening, it's so instinctive that you can hardly help it. You see who gets invited places and who is placed on promotional brochures to sell the college to prospective students and who is given raises at work and who gets playing time on Friday night and who adults speak highly of to other adults. "Oh, he's wise beyond his years." "Why, yes he is! I look forward to seeing how he turns out." You make like you don't hear, but you're sucking it in like a siphon. You take your cues from body language and non-verbals. You catch people's smiles and scowls. You listen to people comment on other people's good or bad behaviors, attitudes and performances. As you gather intel, you assemble a way of life that becomes a state of being. Largely, this state of being is nothing more than "cut and paste", plastic and queer as a "spork".

Lately, I've been wondering who I really am. If I were to peal away all of the duplicitous duct tape that is holding me together, what kind of man would be standing there? What do I really, really like to do? What kind of personality do I really have? Am I funny, or is that made up? Am I actually quite shy enjoying the fringes? Am I talkative or taciturn? Am I a people person or a loner? Who knows? So many days of my life are spent living out an edited script of so many different stories that I'm not sure what is actually my story and what is a cornucopia of a bunch of other people's stories smashed together.

I really want to get about the business of being me at some point, though. Whoever I am, whether interesting or not, I want to be that man. Even if it turns out quite disappointing when all is said and done, I would rather know that now.

Like I said, I'm somewhat confused as to what is actually me and what is someone I've unknowingly become along the way that is a collage I've pieced together of "noteworthy" news clippings. This isn't all bad, but it seems you can get lost in the process of piecing together who you really are.

I know God knows who I am, so I suppose the closer I get to Him the better chance I have of getting closer to me.