Jolly Old

"If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will destroy you."

Throughout college I groaned whenever people would talk about finding themselves. I remember a particularly aggravating instance in a coffee shop known as Common Grounds, where this guy Jeff told me that he really felt like he was finding out who he was because of college. He really felt this connection to his classes, he was being challenged and he thought that his real personality was shining through finally. He blathered on and on about this for sometime while I feigned interest and wondered why all coffee shops have to be named using a caffeinated play on words.

You may find me unfeeling about this brand of self-revelation, but it's because I just don't buy it. I don't buy the concept that who we are is something decided outside of us. That who we are is some sort of present, offered up on a silver platter for us to either accept or deny. If the real me is deep inside waiting to be found, who is the person that's doing the searching?

Maybe I'm splitting hairs about a cliche - of course what my friend really means is that he's exploring worldly options and figuring out what sort of things attract him the most. He's really finding the world, not finding himself. Jeff was a philosopher major though, so every week he had found a new version of himself - attempting to find the middle path in January and then striving to become an ubermensch in April.

I had another illuminating conversation with a close friend of mine about changing focus in life - the idea that what you find important might not be that important. I suggested he shift his focus a bit if he was unhappy, and responded that he didn't think it was in his nature. As if who he was was an inescapable fact, never to be changed. His nature was a ball and chain, some albatross slung around his neck for him to endure.

The problem is, I can't really prove them wrong.

I suppose it's because it's an uphill battle against what we're naturally inclined to do. A certain way of life is just easier for us to handle, even when it comes with pain and baggage. But should inertia be the only reason we remain the way we are?

The quote I listed above is from a wise man who has been quoted all over the place. I'm not sure why, but this quote concomitantly gives me hope and irritates me. It speaks of an infinite optimism, that if we just look inside ourselves, what we live for will bring us great joy. But the part about what's inside me bothers me. Maybe it speaks to a larger problem I have with religion, a lack of control, the idea that who I am is predetermined. It also seems to mix metaphors - telling me to work against my nature and to seek my true one. To battle uphill to find what comes easiest to me.

Depending on how you believe, the author of the quote is either Jesus Christ or his nephew Thomas pretending that it was Jesus Christ in a futile attempt to be featured in The Bible.

The quote does have a great impact, I think, though. In either case, it's a matter of what we produce that destroys us. It doesn't speak at all about what we bottle up inside. It seems to claim that, no matter what, we cannot help but produce things. They can be a dirty look at someone who we know spoke ill of us, a lack of action when an old lady needs help across the street, a kind word for a friend with a problem, or a phone call home to your mother because you know she misses you. Whether we act or do not, we produce something. We communicate what we're really about. What's inside of us.

I just hope that I have more control of shaping what that is.