When I was growing up I wanted to be a rock star. But for most of my life when I asked the question who do I want to be, my reflection would say, sorry hon I have no idea.
Once I thought I wanted to be a politician because they changed the world didn’t they? And then I saw how they got slated in the papers for partaking in the party life and I was soon put off.
Then I thought, I know what, I’ll run a massive company, and change the world that way, but I couldn’t think what I wanted to sell.
So I joined the IT industry and sold things, made money and drove around showing off software. To be honest I rather liked it. But what killed that was selling vapour ware. I was far too honest so I moved into marketing. This I enjoyed for a while and then it was consultancy, training and executive coaching…
Much later I gave up and became what felt like a nobody, trapped in a loveless marriage.
But the truth is these were all jobs or roles, which while they told the world what I did, they didn’t share the golden magical elixir of me and my ‘me’ness.
What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. ‘Who am I, then?’ The one who sees that. Eckhart Tolle
If I am not the voice in my head, or the body that I wear, then who do I want to be is a wonderful and quite perplexing question.
And almost as bad as who are you?
You are a soul, born into a body, here to live out the road map you created for yourself before you left the soul place.
Yikes that’s a bit scary, isn’t there a manual for being and being on the road of life?
In yoga class we would chant this Mantram Of The Soul and while I enjoyed saying it, no one could tell me what it meant and so I surmised that I was invoking my soul purpose and who I was in my purest form without the baggage of being human.
I am the Soul.
I am the Light Divine.
I am Love.
I am Will.
I am Fixed Design
Invocation of the soul – Alice Bailey
What I have come to believe is that who I want to be is about qualities and values.
I want to be kind, loving, lovable, nonjudgmental, funny, perspicacious, discerning and extraordinary in an ordinary way. I just want to be the kind of person that others trust and respect. That others know that they can rely on when they need some love or a doggy lick.
And yet there could be more that I want as I learn and traverse this life. I am like you a work in progress and the never finished article and I guess I will only know what that is when I go home.
What I know is that the me that I desire to be now, will not be the who I want to be later in my life and I like that. I like the idea that I am forever evolving and becoming and this is what I believe to be part of the magic of life and being human.
If I cast my mind back to the dances I have had with the demons within. I can see how they have helped me to become the me I am today. Just as I witness the strangeness of life and how I have seen others. It is by the grace of God that some of these people are not us.
What about the tramp in the car park sipping cider while his dog sits patiently by? What bought this man to that corner of the car park? If I had taken a different fork in my road, would that be me? What if my party excesses had become one too many and in a moment of carelessness I wandered to the other side of the street to make my life out of a cardboard box and a few cans of cider?
And the kid I caught in the street throwing stones at car windows in an attempt to draw attention both to him and away from him? This child, who wouldn’t confess or say sorry ended up being beaten by his mother and who knows what else because of his stubbornness. Who are we to berate this scrap when all he wants is to be loved? What if the naughty child that you or I once was decided that being bad was the only way to get noticed and ended up being quite different people to who we are today?
On another day I found myself standing in a filthy flat at eight am, with a cider swilling ex-heroin addict, crying hysterically because her son had just died, and she couldn’t comprehend why another person in her life had passed.
I watched while she ranted, passing pictures of different dead men to me, husband, boyfriend, brother, uncle and now son. My emotions were ripped into a million pieces, I held her as she cried, she stunk, and as she sobbed, I wondered what I could do? Back home was a 91-year-old woman who would shortly be getting out of bed and needed my help to feed her.
Torn. One side wanting to stay, help her to sober up and put her life back on track and the other side having to go and help someone else. My head was fucked, and I chose to walk away and leave her to it. Not a day passes when I don’t think of her, and I don’t like the part of me that left her to it. Some months later, she killed herself.
I know lots of people who look down their noses at the drunks and druggies, have they never stuffed their faces with too much fine wine and good grub or spent too much on a retail therapy trip. It’s the same thing, just different sides of the same coin. My dad was an alcoholic, so I guess that makes me more understanding.
I know that there is so much wrong and too much evil, I have no idea what causes someone to kill others or steal off old ladies, but something drives them, some forces exist that pulls them in that direction.
When my mum had her pocket picked, she was distraught. They walked away with her 90 euros and who knows how much from other old ladies. Mum deeply saddened to be a victim was bought dinner by friends, she lost some cash and a bit of faith. Did the thieves go home and buy dinner for their family, did the money go into some pot, did they get their split, was it a choice because of dire need or are they out and out shits?
We know there is no excuse for adultery, theft or killing, these people could keep their pants on, get jobs or go to anger management classes, couldn’t they?
Could they? When the devil dances with their demons, what choices do they feel that they have? How did they become them?
We make our own reality; our own choices and it is never too late to change. It is never too late to become who you want to be.
I think the question who do I want to be is a beautiful question and one you already know the answer to.
When the dark angels come to play with you, when they steal your essence, and you let life fall indiscriminately through your fingers, focus on what you can learn, and the gifts that you have been graced with.
Encourage your curious child to come out, get him or her ready to play, give them crayons and tell them to scribble. As we get older we forget what it is like to jump in puddles, or leap over streams, catch raindrops from leaves, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t start again and reach into your hidden depths and manifest your dreams – you can.
Consider this. You are who you are meant to be. You are the one who determines who you are. You are the one who chooses from here on in who you want to be.
Grab your journal, dig deep and answer the question – who do you want to be? What about who don’t you want to be?