Member-only story
There are two things that nobody ever expects to be less than perfect. Their children and themselves.
Just as everybody thinks that their children will be beautiful, well behaved, cuter versions of themselves, when people set out to “find themselves”, what they’re expecting to find is a clear-headed, confident, well-integrated person. Someone with a sense of purpose and the will to act it out.
It may well be that within each of us there’s a version of this ideal, but that ideal isn’t who we are. That’s who we could be, which is something very different. Who we could be is limited only by our imagination. We could learn anything we don’t know. We could find the motivation and discipline to stop procrastinating, we could stop letting fear stand in our way.
There are so many things we could be, and while all of this is wonderful, none of this brings us any closer to who we are. Are. Present tense.
Luckily, figuring out who you are in the present is surprisingly simple. Set a timeframe, the last month say, and pay careful attention to the things you do when nobody else is watching.
Don’t justify away the hours when you sat on the sofa eating ice cream and watching Netflix. Don’t gloss over the fact that you still haven’t started that book that you’ve been talking about writing for…
