I Think, Therefore I Am ...I am ____?????

It's the biggest question - the one that knocks the wind right out of us at an interview. WHO ARE YOU? Describe yourself - how can you if you don't know who you are? A normal person may say, "I am __(their name)___." A smart person may say, "I am the son/daughter of _____". A smarter person may trace their lineage back to their great-great-great-etc.grandparents. There may even be a person who says "I am the son/daughter of Adam and Eve." Okay - so you're at a higher level, but what happens from there? Who are you at the next level? Sure we can go on to describe our accomplishments and our passions and all that crap that honestly doesn't matter. But that doesn't ultimately help us to discover ourselves.

Off to a tangent! You know how I love doing that :) I promise it will be relevant at the end, though!

What is a person's character? It has been described as the actions one takes when no one is looking. Your actions make up your character and in doing so, your personality. The clothes you wear, the food you eat, the people you choose to associate with, the events you choose to participate in all create YOU. See? I told you it would be relevant! So really, who we are is a product of what we do. EVERYTHING MATTERS. Whatever you decide to do, realize it impacts you as a person. Nothing is meaningless. I guess in a weird way, I'm saying the universe takes into account everything you do (or don't do for that matter) and cosmically uses karma to even out the actions of the world. Ever hear of the "butterfly effect"? Everything you do will impact someone halfway across the world, potentially. And it just may come back to bite you in the ass one day. Just saying. And the reactions of the people around us, however irrelevant they may seem, will ultimately shape our future actions. So we learn from our mistakes, make new ones, and continuously improve ourselves in hopes of discovering our true selves in our actions and reactions of others around us. Maybe, just maybe, our true reason for living is to discover our self amongst the hate, mistrust, and self-doubt in the world. We find ourselves in each other because we truly stem from the same seed and this bond is stronger than any other. So who are we? We are: actions, events, words, thoughts, people...we are one. (Yeah, I know - quite philosophical of me, not to mention quite scattered, but hey, that's the way I think. Call it "stream of consciousness"...if what we're living in is conscious at all. But that discussion is for a later time.)

And so, my fellow readers, I end this post with a quote that beautifully summarizes humanity's reason for existence on this wonderful planet earth, "There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up." -- John Andrew Holmes. Beautiful, isn't it? Maybe there is hope for us all, after all :)