Who are you if you are not YOU -whose dreams are you dreaming, whose story are you weaving?
The Longman dictionary defines being in sync as things that ‘are working well together at the same time and speed.’ Therefore, a person who knows herself is ‘Working well together with herself to fulfil her dreams. And a person who so engaged is doing that with the fundamental components of everything that makes her who she is — her body, soul and mind. She engages with the physiological and psychological emotions that make up that body, soul, and mind. But a person with limited self-knowledge is ‘not working well together with herself. As such, the physiological and psychological aspects of such a self are at war with each other. A self in conflict with itself is a self in chaos. A self in turmoil is a self that, well, I am sure you get the gist.
My friend was right; life is like a story. And just like stories, it is made up of the good and the bad. Every storyteller understands that. They also understand that there are essential components that determine if a story will be good or bad — such as the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and of course, the resolution. For example, if a story were a car, these features would be its engine: and we all know that engines are required for vehicles to function correctly. Stories are just like cars; they don’t work well without their essential components. Good (or extraordinary, fantastic, and so on) run smoothly, follow a logical pattern and allow the action to develop logically that the reader can follow. On the other hand, bad stories meander irrelevantly without proper conclusion and leave the reader feeling cheated at the end.
YOU are essentially the driving force of the story of your life (just as the engine is the driving force of a car). How well your life journey will go will depend on the person behind its driving wheel — YOU. But do you know who YOU are?
Whose dreams are you dreaming, whose story are you weaving?
Storytellers create stories, and dreams are the secret longings of an individual for his or her life. Like the storyteller who creates stories, an individual’s objectives are about what they would like the outcome of their lives. But if the person in question does not know who they are, whose dream are they dreaming? We have seen that a story without the essential driving elements is mediocre, unsatisfying to the reader and impossible to make sense of. Similarly, a life in which the main character is not known by the person living it is also mediocre, not to mention unsatisfying. That is why you can be in a job that pays top money, engages in a ‘reasonably functioning’ relationship with your spouse, be a parent to children who are doing all they ought to do and still feel intensely dissatisfied with your lot. It is why you can appear to ‘have it all, but deep down inside, you know that you can’t even boast of having a quarter of whatever that ‘it may be. What such feelings would tell you (if you could ask) is that your life story is not in sync with that story’s main character, YOU.
Life, they say, is a journey as with every journey, whatever its nature (short to the supermarket, or long on vacation). Whatever the nature of the journey, there is one unquestionable, needful accessory that you must take along –YOU.
YOU are the person that follows you everywhere, every day, at all times. If YOU are happy, you will be happy; but if YOU are unhappy? Well, then. Therefore, since the success of any journey you undertake — whether complex or straightforward — depends on this one fundamental factor, it does make sense to have an in-depth knowledge of it if you want your life journey to be comfortable or go precisely according to the plan you have ordained.
And so YOU matter. Beyond the laid-down entanglements of secular, spiritual, communal, family (and sometimes even self) enactments that hold you bound and determine how you should or should not act, what you should or should not say, with whom you should or should not associate. Ultimately, in all of these, it is all about YOU. Because of how well the other aspects of you will turn out — family, friends, career, and so on — without the wellness of YOU, everything else will pale. Everything else will be unbalanced.
Who are you if you are not YOU?
Counselling is an excellent method of discovering who we are. However, like most people who have been counselled at one point or the other by well-meaning experts, I was told to ‘believe in yourself,’ as the first step to achieving what I was trying to accomplish. Since none of the experts ever pointed it out, I never thought ‘knowing’ was mandatory before the ‘believing.’ As I ‘fought’ to attain my goals, my focus was always on the ‘believing.’ I knew no other way to think or dream. Looking back now, I wish my motivators had spent more time counselling me to ‘know’ — at least at the beginning. Because the question is, how can you believe in what you don’t even know? What is there to believe in if knowing is a blank space in your subconscious?
Finally, most of us dream ‘big’ of course, but can’t answer the question, who are you? The fact is, we can’t work with what we don’t know and expect it to produce our desired result. It is like pottery making; just as you cannot correctly mould the clay into the shape you desire unless you understand the nature of the clay, so too can you not become all (or the best) you can be without a proper understanding of who YOU are. True self-fulfilment is achieved by adequate knowledge (or knowing) of the self. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of the book you are holding in your hand: to become who you were made to be, fulfil your dreams — or know if your dreams are even well and truly yours — know YOU! Take time to know YOU!
