No Real You

I’d like to encourage you
to stop trying to be the real you.
What would you even suppose that might be?

Someday, notice how you change.
Notice the you that claims to be you when you wake up in the morning,
then notice the you that starts working or doing whatever you intend to do every day,
notice the you that stops for lunch and the you that needed to,
notice the you that watches the clock in order to go back home,
notice the you that greets whatever shares your home that makes it home for you.
Notice the you that eats dinner.
Notice the you that sometimes goes out in the evening to meet with other folks and
Notice how that you differs depending upon which folks you’re meeting.
Notice the you that protects itself from the things you don’t understand.
Notice the you that sheds its height as bedtime approaches.
Notice the you that wakes to pee before you’re done sleeping.

You can detect a different you at these and so many other times each day.
So which one is the real you?

None of them.

I recommend that you give up the idea of even discovering the real you.
It doesn’t exist.
But you can do this…
Write the old you off.
The more you write off all these old yous what’s left is rather precious.
It’s not that you will discover the real you, you will discover that there is no real you.
You’ll discover that our capacity for me-ness is huge and dynamic.
Our identity can continue to grow and grow and grow daily even hourly with the things that we see and discover each day.

I ate some snow today.
No big deal.
But I bet you did not.

The little things that each of us does
can mean so much to us,
and we may not realize how unique they are to us.