Tuesday, August 29, 2017


Becoming

One of the struggles I frequently see in young people, especially in the eighteen to twenty-eight year olds, is the feeling that they must "be."
The sense of urgency that they must "be" who they are to become.

 When we are in the lower grades of school, it is evident that we are learning to become who we will be; but when we're out of High School and into the College years we have this mistaken valuation that we should "be" and we will defend who we are inflexibly and vociferously, only to find the next year our opinions and values have changed.

I also see many young people discouraged and plunged into despair by who they are: completely overlooking the fact that they are still becoming.

 They compare themselves to others that have become something they admire, they recognize they have not accomplished or achieved the virtue they admire, and, again, fail to recognize they are becoming: and are not expected to "be."
The younger years of adulthood are when we establish what we want to be, what we consider noble, valuable and true, and then those young years, and beyond, are when we begin the process of gathering and shedding, bit by bit the traits we value and those that displease and detest us.
The process of "becoming" lasts our entire lifetime. The only failure is when we cease to strive towards our goals and endeavors.

  I think this is summed up by Carl Sandburg's quote,  
"I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little.

Not always shall you be what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you and therefore I love you." 

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