Who Are You Becoming?

Growing up, I had a true best friend. We are only 6 days apart. We did practically everything together.

When you’re a kid, you don’t notice a lot of things. It didn’t dawn on me until much later in life just how much his parents did for me when my mom got sick. There were already five kids in their household, but that didn’t stop them from taking every opportunity to care for me and my four siblings.

So, I was devastated when they moved away. I thought I would never have a friend like him again. Of course, most of us have had the experience of losing a friend (in one form or another). Sometimes we move forward. Sometimes we just move on.

Just four short years after they moved, my family moved as well. He and I ended up at the same high school. We rarely spoke to each other. I had gone full nerd. He was one of the cool kids — student body officer, martial artist, popular with the girls, athlete.

We had both become entirely different people; to the point that we couldn’t (wouldn’t) relate to each other anymore. The friendship that we both mourned so much when he moved had truly died.

I don’t consider myself a planner. When I write software, it’s haphazard. Sometimes, that works really well for me. Other times, I have to go back to square one to add something I didn’t think about before. Invariably, however, I sit down and just start coding.

But, the truth is most of us plan, maybe without even thinking about it. We make plans for life. We make plans how we’ll spend our days. We plan for vacations, special events, major life changes, etc.

When those plans get interrupted or altered, we often get frustrated or discouraged. The old adage rings true, “life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”

Those plans are regularly made up of to do lists — things that need to be checked off. Regularly, however, our plans lack the more important to be list. Those are the things that can’t be checked off, but they are the essence of who we become along the way.

Lynn Robbins once said:

Do without be — hypocrisy — portrays a false image to others, while be without do portrays a false image to oneself.

Hypocrisy and self-deception: two sides of the same coin.

While who we become in life is more important than what we do, we can’t fully become anything without a lot of doing in the process. If you’re standing still (metaphorically speaking), don’t expect to go anywhere¹. You don’t become a great parent by reading a lot of books on parenting then neglecting your child. You become a good parent by giving selflessly as you nurture your child into adulthood and beyond. Turns out, you don’t have to read any parenting books to be a great parent. That’s why being a good parent is a lifelong pursuit. There are almost limitless educational opportunities. The same is true in most professions.

I’m not as young as I once was, and it has taken me a long time to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Remember, becoming requires a lot of doing. In the process of figuring all of this out, I am also watching my kids grow up with frightening rapidity. In just a few months, my oldest child will leave the nest. In just eleven years, my wife and I may be the only ones living in our home. So that question of who I want to become weighs increasingly on my mind. First and foremost, I told myself I would always be a good husband. Second, a good father. I’ve not always been either of those things, but I am working on it with more resolve than ever before.

In our over-programmed, frenetically-paced lives, this is an open invitation to pause for just a moment and consider who it is that you want to be.

• Do the things you spend your time on support living according to your values?

• Do you often set aside the important for the sake of the trivial?

• Do you work for money to buy more stuff while missing out on life-changing moments in the lives of your loved-ones?²

Those can be hard questions to consider, but it’s important to really contemplate them.

To paraphrase the words of Paulo Coelho:

One day you I wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. Do them now.

Thanks for reading!

¹I have to include the statement of metaphor or I’m sure I’ll get called out. You can stand still on a boat and go plenty of places. You can sit still and fly halfway around the world.

²I, of course, know that some amount of work is required in order to thrive in current societal constraints.