Finding yourself is the time of searching. It’s knowing that you have dreams, passions, fears, and purpose, but still being unsure of what that means for you. It’s trying new things. Talking to people who are different than you. Finding someone to look up to. It’s being that person for someone else. It is figuring out what it is that makes your heart burn. It’s deciding if you want to be comfortable, or if you long for adventure instead. You can let it be a time of loneliness, when you don’t quite feel like you belong anywhere. Or, it can be a time of building community, where a group of people acknowledges that we don’t know where life will take us, but we all want to do the best that we can, and devote everything inside of us to leaving this world better than we found it. I hope we become fluent in choosing the second.
When you become yourself, you step into what ever it is that you found. I think that becoming yourself is a time of devotion. After finding the things that make you feel alive, becoming yourself is the act of devoting everything that you are to those causes.
Finding yourself is collecting pieces of a puzzle, and becoming yourself is sitting down long enough fit the pieces of the puzzle together and make something beautiful.
anna kate cartwright 