living alone with a stranger is no fun place to be

I continue to think that the most central question we ask or think about is one of identity. Who am I? The question has been asked in other ways. “What do you do?” or “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I might ask it this way, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you want to be who mom and dad say you should? Do you want to be who your friends say you should? Do you think in terms of “I want to be like this person or that one?” Many of us do. Our identity is wrapped up in what someone else thinks about us or wants/hopes for us. The question of identity is rooted in our decision to please them or have them like us.

The book I keep saying that everyone should read is Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, by Parker Palmer. He gets at it this way. In all of our lives, we may find that we are “wearing other people’s faces,” rather than revealing who we really are and showing our true selves. We wear the faces given to us by our parents, our teachers, our ministers, our peers. As time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to wear our own God-given faces, to see the “image of God” in which we were created.

So, the challenge is this, begin a journey of self-discovery. As it has been said elsewhere, life is best understood as a journey rather than a destination. Along the journey you might just find a little more of who you are.