Good Morning,
I find many people trying to be like someone. A decade or so ago it was ‘Be Like Mike’ in folks wanting to be like Michael Jordan. People go to hair salons to get their hair cut like some of the pretty models. We buy clothes to look like someone famous.
In some ways I don’t really have a problem. If anyone knows me, I have no fashion sense. My wife, Karen, buys and organizes my clothing to reduce the chances of me walking out of the house looking like a cast member from ‘Revenge of the Nerds’. When I go to the hair salon, I ask Sally who does my hair to ‘make it look good’ no matter who it ends up looking like (I say that because she is a professional, and I really have no clue what looks good).
Some folks, though, try to be like others. Not so much in looks, but in personality, or worse trying to be that person.
I have my heroes like Kirk Weisler, Todd Arwood and Hope Stith and others, but so much as a I appreciate them, I know I cannot be them (and Kirk is really cool!), so why even try. Instead, I focus on learning FROM them, rather than being them.
It is better, then, to be an original you, then to be just another copy of someone or something else.
This concept was shown well in “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” the C.S. Lewis book turned into movie. During the movie, Lucy, the youngest child who came over to Narnia tries to find ways to be like her older sister, Susan who she is jealous of.
At one point she finds a spell to help her look more beautiful. In casting that spell, she finds herself becoming her Sister and losing out on being herself. With some guidance from Aslan and a little maturing, Lucy finds out that it is okay to be herself.
A younger girl stowed away on the Dawn Treader to help her dad find her lost mother. At the end of the movie she told Lucy that she wanted to grow up to be just like her.
Lucy then told the little girl she should grow up to be just like herself.
What wonderful advice.
In the past I would ask people ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and waited for the myriad of answers.
I know now the best answer is that when I grow up, I want to be me.
This may sound like advice to give to children, and it is, but we adults often find ourselves searching for who we are, or hitch our wagon on who we want to be. It is at those moments we need to stop and remember this advice.
Do we want to be a copy of something or someone else, or do we want to be an original. An original us.
Enjoy!
Sanford Berenberg
Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net
http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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