I would like to say that I’ve done a lot of reading over break. But that would be lying, and even though you wouldn’t ever know and it doesn’t really make any difference in your life how much I read, I would feel guilty about it. Maybe not right away, but it would happen eventually.
I have done a lot of reading over the last few days. (Which is entirely true.) And what happens a lot of times when I read things—good things, at least—is I get this urge to write like the people I’ve been reading do. I get done reading C.S. Lewis and I want to present deep concepts with brilliant illustrations. I get done reading Donald Miller and I want to be relative and unsettling and creative while being casual about it the whole time. I read Aaron Weiss’s lyrics (from the band mewithoutYou) and want to be poetic and original and most of all, so incredibly honest. So I get out my journal or I web-surf my way over to WordPress and start my writing. After a very short span of time, I realize what we all already know: I am not C.S. Lewis, or Donald Miller, or Aaron Weiss, or Rob Bell, or Erwin McManus, or Antoine de Saint-Exupery, or any other author I love to read. I cannot write like them because I am not them, and it is silly and kind of embarrassing that I would think anything otherwise. (But do try and read at least some of those authors…they’re all fantastic.)
And so now that I’m thinking straight and not having a minor (but threatening nonetheless) identity crisis, I wonder how many times in our lives we try to be someone we’re not. And this is a really cliche thing to mention, but it’s still something that each and every one of us struggles with, isn’t it? It really is a rare thing to be satisfied with yourself. It’s said that you are your biggest critic. Maybe that’s why we try to find escape in becoming other people—because we’re too critical of ourselves. And maybe that’s bad, it’s totally possible to be over-critical and expect too much from yourself. It’s not healthy to expect more of yourself than you can give, and I think this is one of the biggest parts of “knowing yourself:” it’s knowing your limits, and accepting them, and always pushing yourself but never beating yourself down for not doing more than you can.
But it also can be good. Because I know better sometimes. I try to escape my identity because I don’t want to face the truth, staring straight at me like a laser beam, and I think that somehow if I don’t look at it I won’t get hit and burned by the laser. It’s the same philosophy we have as little kids: “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me!” I try to write like other writers so I don’t have to face the fact that I can’t write like them. We try to hide in other people so we don’t have to face the fact that we have a lot of flaws that are a lot worse than not being able to write like your favorite authors.
And you know this is a really farfetched idea. Because maybe you’re good at acting, and maybe you know who or what you’re trying to be well enough to convince everyone. You might actually be able to pull this imposter thing off. But you know. Somewhere in the depths of this ambiguous, murky identity, clouded with pride and poisoned with denial, I know that I am me, and not anyone else. And if I cover my eyes and play a three-year-old’s game of hide-and-seek with myself, God still knows. And I can’t escape that.
You can’t hide from God. You can’t even run from God. At some point, we have to face who we are, and accept that there are things we can’t do. There are things we will never be able to do. There are things about us, dark secrets and heavy flaws, that we all have. Adam and Eve were not thinking straight when they tried to hide from God, that’s obvious to us. But don’t we do the same thing?
And this leads me to something I mentioned at the very beginning. I doubt you even gave it second thought, but here I am, being a thorough writer, and tying the end together with the beginning. We may not have to deal with being ourself and no one else for awhile. But it will happen eventually, just like I would eventually feel guilty about lying concerning my reading habits of late. Someday we will realize that we are who God made us to be and no one else, and there’s no getting around that. And this inescapable truth can be unsettling at times, and very comforting at others. But there is something else that happens eventually once we start being honest with ourselves. We make progress. By the weird grace of God (that I still don’t understand but accept anyway, because I’ve found that I can’t live without it) we start seeing ourselves the way he sees us. It’s not something that happens overnight, mind you. It’ something that happens over a long (usually longer than we’d like, but I suppose God’s timing is better than our own) period of time.
So what’s the real message behind all this? I don’t know. I’m just trying to write like myself, I guess.
