Self discovery is a painful and slow process. I think we often associate it with being in our teens, or even in our twenties. Maybe I’m behind everyone else, but I’m really doing a lot of work on this and I’m 45! This year in particular has been a real journey of self-discovery for me. I’ve spent a lot of my life asking others who they think I am or trying to guess their expectations so I can try and live up to them. Only this year have I seriously started asking those questions to myself.
All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
I don’t know if you’ve even seen Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere (1999). This movie has always cracked me up. In the movie she can’t decide how she likes her eggs…fried? Scrambled? Poached? Richerd Gere’s character points out to her that she always eats her eggs the way that her partner likes them. I love the scene where she’s got a bunch of different eggs and she’s tasting them all to see how she likes them cooked. I think this is my year of figuring out how I like my eggs (so to speak). I just wish getting to know myself was as easy as making eggs 8 or 9 different ways and then trying them until I find my favorite.
I’m reading Redefining Realness by Janet Mock. It’s a fantastic, hard-hitting book. She talks about her journey to womanhood and identity. She says:
Self-definition and determination is about the many and varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create and evolve into who we know ourselves to be.
Janet Mock, Redefining Realness
I don’t think we can become who we are really meant to be when we are constantly checking back with someone else. I think it’s important to discover who we currently are and also set a goal for who we want to become. If we don’t know where we are now how can we possibly know how to get where we’re going? That reminds me of the maps in the mall, you know with the star that says “you are here”? That’s what I’m figuring out right now, where is that star for me? I appreciate so much that she says it takes strength and audacity to get there. Self-discovery is not a pretty, easy and clean process. It’s messy, hard, painful and at times ugly. But in the end we can truly come to know that we are….
