Written by: Ps Jenni Ho-Huan (Photo by: Lee Wei Jie)

What it takes to be ‘you’

Anna wasn’t completely sure why she slammed her door. She was upset but she knew that compared to a few months ago, this wouldn’t have been her response. These days, she cannot be herself except behind the closed door.

Don looked at his dad and just felt light-years away from him. “How on earth are we even related?” he thought to himself. Oh, how many times he wished he could just be left alone.

We crave for the space to just be. One where we can rule our universe, where we are the pinpoint focus. We want everything else to fade and just have us come into sharp relief; as if this makes us solid, real, viable.

We dream of alternate worlds where we get to decide who shares our space and is allowed into our script. It’s the wonderful dream-time of being on an island (where the temperatures do not go beyond twenty-five degrees) with a few of our favourite people and all our favourite foods and things, plus wifi. Or perhaps for the more gladiatorial types, something much more rugged and risky.

The point is: we want to be at the centre of it all.

But then you wake up and realise it’s all but a dream, as other people are just all over you. The DNA in your body has come from your parents. Your brain has stored words, ideas, smells, and even touch. You are listening to vibrations and vocalisations, reading bits and bytes, and imbibing culture each moment.

Is it necessary and possible to strip all these accoutrements and attachments away? The answer is of course both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. We are individuals, but at the same time, we will always be part of something larger: family, class, clique, community, nation. This means that the supreme task of being the individual you crave to be requires that we figure out the ‘me’ bit as well as the ‘we’ bit. The tricky thing is that this is a task for a lifetime.

So here’s a few takes on this journey after being at it for nearly thirty years (counting from the time I was in my twenties). I hope these 3 perspectives will protect and propel you on this needful journey of selfhood.

1. The task: An uncovering
In many ways who we are can lay hidden beneath layers of expectations, failures, and successes. At some point, we need to sort it through and decide which we will keep and which we will toss off. This is a wardrobe spring cleaning, but for our soul and our personality. We can look to many things — Pinterest, Instagram, etc — to help us figure out who we are, or we can look within and cast a backward glance.

I propose the latter because each of us began life with something. From our earliest days we have joys, delights, and dreams. There are good and negative experiences that have impacted and shaped us. A person without a past is not anchored for the present and may project his/her future based on mere trends.

When I look back, I can see how being in a large family that was struggling to make ends meet has shaped me to have compassion for others. I have also noticed that I have been handed some gifts: the ability to relate to many kinds of people, to see the comedic side of things, to talk my way out of trouble!

Clearly not all of these gifts were useful at first. In fact, my primary school teacher was so upset with my talking that she called me a chatterbox and often shut me up. But if I accepted and lived by the expectations of others, I may lose my gifts. Instead, I took courage to embrace them and allowed myself to be who I am. Of course, I had to learn over time what I really cared to talk about!

2. The power: Invincibility
To embark on this process of uncovering, you have to know that you can hack it. There is a need to feel power, daring-do, gumption, possibility. There must be a sense of invincibility. Where does one get this power?

After scanning the horizon for heroes and models, and finding that they are all fallible at many points, the sense of invincibility we need can only be found in a Source beyond all of these. Invincibility comes when you sense that someone greater and committed to you stands with you and longs to see you succeed.

This is why we need cheerleaders or friends. Yet, every human being have their own needs and we will find ourselves quite alone, even misunderstood at times. Thus, the best Source is someone who is stable, infallible, and constant. God would make a good candidate.

3. The need: Company
God, while completely reliable, is not someone we can Whatsapp or Facebook message (though how we wish we could!). We are very “present-tense” creatures. We want to reach out to share our joys, our discoveries, our struggles.

We want to be our own person, yet our uniqueness is a study in contrasts and contours. I am me because I am not you. We need people around us who would make us feel safe enough to explore who we are and celebrate our individuality, our quirks, and our dreams.

Becoming who you are is a journey of acceptance — of what has been handed to you and what you have had to face and endure. It is a journey of rising beyond that to stand on a plane where you know that you were created to be your own person. You will feel the urge to emerge from all that you have been told, to sort out what you believe and what you don’t.

It is the journey of finding that while you are unique, you can connect at deep and fascinating levels with other equally unique individuals in the wonderful gifts of friendship and, for some, marriage. Have a great journey!

[author] [author_image timthumb=’off’]https://selah.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Jenni-Ho-Huan_PP.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]JENNI is a pastor-writer who loves to uncover authentic trails through life’s peaks and valleys. She has authored three books and her blog is over at: www.jennihh.blogspot.sg [/author_info] [/author]