An ode to the meandering miracle of selfhood
The Long Unfolding
We arrive in the world raw, unformed, bewildered. A baby doesn’t know who it is. A child doesn’t yet know what will matter. Even in youth, identity feels like mist: here for a moment, then shifting.
And yet, across the decades, something steady persists — the sense that we are slowly becoming. We are sculptors shaping marble we can’t fully see, discovering the figure only as we chip away.
To become ourselves is to embrace this long unfolding. To honor the meandering, the false starts, the returns, the surprises.
The Beauty of Divergence
Some journeys are straight lines, but most are spirals. We move forward, circle back, take detours. We try on roles that don’t quite fit. We pursue paths that fade into dead ends.
And still, even in those wrong turns, we gather something: a lesson, a skill, a scar, a story. Divergence is not waste. It’s compost — nourishing the soil of who we are.
Think of the jobs we’ve left, the relationships that ended, the hobbies abandoned. At the time, they may have felt like failures. But years later, we see their residue — the patience we gained, the resilience we built, the taste we refined. Divergence gave us ingredients we couldn’t have harvested any other way.
The self doesn’t arrive prepackaged. It emerges, stitched together from fragments of attempt. That’s what makes it beautiful: it is truly ours.
The Courage to Wander
It takes courage to wander. To follow curiosity when it looks peculiar. To pivot when the old passion cools. To risk being misunderstood when you choose what feels right to you.
But wandering is not aimlessness. It’s fidelity to the inner compass. Every soul has a north star, even if it only glimmers faintly. We don’t need the whole map. We only need the courage to take the next step toward it.
On a Mountain Trail
Picture a traveler on a mountain trail. The path forks: one well-worn, one faint. The worn path promises safety. The faint one promises nothing but wonder. The traveler hesitates, heart pounding, then takes the faint track.
Years later, looking back, they realize that choice shaped their life — friendships, work, places lived, joys discovered. The fork was small. The outcome was enormous.
We all stand at such forks. Becoming ourselves means daring to choose the faint trail when it calls to us.
Mortality’s Clarion
Death clarifies everything. One day, our wandering ends. One day, the story closes. And that fact turns selfhood from an optional project into an urgent one.
If we live only to please, if we silence the peculiar fascinations, if we cling to roles that no longer fit — mortality exposes the waste. But if we honor our becoming, even imperfectly, then the end comes not as mockery but as validation.
The Celebration of Becoming
Becoming ourselves is not about reaching a flawless endpoint. It’s about savoring the process of unfolding. Each spark followed, each mask dropped, each risk taken is cause for celebration.
We celebrate when someone finds their stride in a new vocation, even after years in another. We celebrate when a person leaves behind an identity that no longer fits and steps, trembling but true, into a new one. We celebrate when a friend dares to show us who they really are, and we recognize them more deeply than before.
To become ourselves is to enlarge the world — for when one person lives authentically, others feel permission to do the same. The ripples of a single life lived honestly extend far beyond the self.
The gift of life is not that we are already perfect selves. The gift is that we get to become.
Closing Thought
Don’t demand a finished identity. Don’t despise the wandering. Don’t apologize for the peculiar.
Celebrate the fact that you are becoming.
Because to become yourself is the rarest miracle — and the greatest way to honor the once-in-eternity chance of being alive.
