Introducing You to YOU

If you had to intro­duce your­self to a group, what would you say? If you had to intro­duce your­self to your­self what would you say? The first ques­tion is eas­ily answered. You would give your age, social sta­tus, achieve­ments, and what you do for a liv­ing. The sec­ond one is much more dif­fi­cult. Noth­ing in the first ques­tion applies to the sec­ond. We are more of a mys­tery to our­selves than to each other.

We think we know who we are, but we really are just guess­ing at it. After all, it is much eas­ier to observe oth­ers than to observe our­selves. The per­son in the mir­ror is used to assum­ing things about him­self or her­self. That is where we miss the boat about our own iden­tity. We sel­dom — if ever — stop along the way in life to get to know ourselves.

Some­times, as a coun­selor, I have peo­ple make two lists: 1. How I feel. 2. What I want. Most peo­ple can­not list more than a few items (if any) under each cat­e­gory. They can tell you all about their mate, their chil­dren, their rel­a­tives, and their friends, but they are speech­less when it comes to telling how they really feel about themselves.

This one fact keeps a multi-billion dol­lar per year coun­sel­ing indus­try in busi­ness. The stranger in the house is the one that wears your shoes. Look­ing out instead of in is a habit. As the years roll along, we feel lonely because we have never got­ten to know our­selves. We have been too busy deal­ing with oth­ers. Worse yet, self-hate is at epi­demic lev­els. Any num­ber of sta­tis­tics attests to this fact (from self-neglect to out­right suicide).

Take your­self on a trip. Turn off the radio in your car. Notice your pref­er­ences and your dis­dains. Who­ever you are, you are in the image of God. Get to know that image a lit­tle bet­ter. It just might take you a lit­tle closer to Deity.