I Am What I Am and I Am What You See
November 26, 2008
I am many things. I think everyday, every moment, I change my definition. Through life experiences, more information, and growth I scrape and reshape myself to be a better person. I doubt this process will ever end, as I know my friends and family will attest; I am light years away from being the best human being I could be, but every day I do strive to be better. So I define myself by many words: Man, African American, husband, son, brother, cousin, friend, student, good, friendly, talkative, a people person, strong, weak, smart, intelligent, silly, quick to judgment, stubborn, positive, wishful, thankful, energetic, extravert, and the list continues. I am always redefining myself and a variety of words can be used on any day at any given time.
Some days I am better than others, but I try to make sure I define myself with positive and progressive words. However, there are those days where I am mean, ungrateful, negative, vengeful, and probably thousands more. I do try everyday to remove those words and feelings from my soul and spirit, because those types of words have no benefits in my life. At the end of the day I am what I am and that’s just a continuous work in progress.
Then I also remember that today we are more connected than ever before. Through the use of the many social networks I find myself updated on what people are doing that I knew over 15 years ago and probably haven’t physically seen in over 10 years. Through it all, I know that other people are also connected with me. I only hope that they are seeing how I define myself. Because I am also a combination of how they define me. There is no way to separate myself from my connection to others, so my definition also comes from them.
If people define me as selfish, mean, nasty, hurtful, vengeful, negative, disrespectful, ungrateful, cruel, spiteful, and the many other harmful words that can describe someone’s character, then I have a problem. No matter how I describe myself, if others see me in a negative light, I have a lot of work to do to change my personality. I have to always be aware of how others are seeing me because it is only a reflection of me. I can choose not to see or believe the reflection, but for the most part it has some truth to it.
I am not saying there won’t be days when people will be incorrect about me or have misjudgments. However if I take a look at the macro rather than the micro, I am sure to see a trend, and that trend/pattern is important. So I redefine myself everyday and so do others and I only hope that most of those definitions are positive because I am what I am and I am what you see. What do you see?








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