Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Perplexing questions about self and the constant desire to be someone else

There is this constant perplexity to be someone else. Something that I struggle with and I do assume that people do struggle with this. A covetous desire to take on the status and respectability of someone we admire or people we think has got it all is sort of a hard battle the soul goes through in life. The world's system has quite the influence.

There was this MTV reality series on something about people having plastic surgeries to alter their appearance to be like their favorite celebrities. People can go through this process of thinking that if they alter their appearance to be like someone famous, the inevitably change their status from being unknown rejects to people with stature and potential. It is a sad commentary to life.

But that aside, it is also sad if we have this constant perplexity to be someone because we see they are successful, they have everything and most of all they are way above who you see you are. This sort of comparison is venomous if let unchecked.

It is sort of like an icky feeling that pervades the soul and fill it with false expectations of how a person should be. Soon we are controlled by this constant bombarding urge to be insecure about everything. "Does it matter what people think about me? It really does I think,"is the constant thought that creeps to the mind. My mind wanders again to this poem written by Bonhoeffer. See it here.

Let me just end by quoting the few last lines of the poem:


Who am I? they mock me, these lonely questions of mine,
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!


2 comments:

Kurt Willems said...

I think that there is always the desire to be someone else in the back of our minds. we want to be smart like that person, good looking like that guy, a great speaker like her, etc. Unfortunately, i think the more we try to be someone else, the less we become like the only person worth trying to be like: Jesus.

Tremonti said...

Kurt,

Very well said buddy!

Hopeful Theo

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I'm a student of Theology (currently and will always be one). I'm a student of culture and a student of music as well. I guess you could say life is a never ending journey of learning. Because of that we never stop being students. Just a little something about this blog: Deconstructing The Monkey is all about being a safe space for emerging conversations