Who am I?

So over the past week or so I have been pondering more on my new favorite quote that I included in my past post. The real question for me is “Who do I believe I am meant to be?”

I have thought a lot about this and I realize that what I was meant to be was deeper that what I was meant to do for a living but on a more meaningful level what type of person I was meant to be. Somewhere in the many classes and courses I have taken over the years, there was the concept presented that you should write down what you want people to say about you when you die.

I use to really not care what people said when I died. I always thought when I die they could just dig a hole, throw me in and cover me up, I didn’t need a funeral or tombstone. A lot of this thinking was just my immature self thinking that I was not important and that people wouldn’t care when I died. I now realize that people would be sad if I passed on and there probably would be a funeral.

So the question is now what would I like people to say about me, not only when I pass on but as I am alive. No one will care so much that I graduated with an undergraduate and graduate degree, or that I was a CPA. What really matters is what type of person I was, not how I made a living but how I made my life.

What I determined is that I have often judged myself based on a belief that my worth was somehow tied to how much money I made or what professional level I achieved. Accordingly as I have struggled to make ends meet from day one, I have judged myself harshly and felt I wasn’t a good father or husband. What I now realize is that I have been judging myself against the wrong standard, what I should have been looking at was my character. What type of person am I?

So to come full circle, to be successful means that I need to live to be the person that I believe I am and that belief should be based on my character and nothing else.

It reminds me of Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. Javert believed that Valjean was a criminal because he stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. By his act he was labeled a criminal but his character spoke of who he truly was. Once he was able to change his identity people knew him for what he truly was, a kind and just man. However, Javert could never see that because he looked at only his one past action.

We can’t be defined by an action we once took or a label that was given to us regardless of if that label was justly given or not. The choice is now mine to determine what person I want to be and to become that person.