Am I the man I choose to be
Or just the man I used to be
Am I the man I want to be
This question it keeps haunting me
Two Hands of a Prayer, Ben Harper
A few days ago I was listening to Burn to Shine at the gym, an album by Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. The lyrics are from one of the songs and there are actually quite a few interesting lines throughout that I like. But, these ones came to mind when I was considering how people consider their own behaviours, or whether they consider them at all. It seems that while most people spend a lot of time only thinking about themselves and how they feel, they don't consider what kind of person they truly are - not in belief, but in behaviour.
We as individuals are always under construction, always changing, but how we change depends on how we behave, not how we feel. For instance, we can feel pain, boredom, or animosity when we go to the gym and exercise, yet that doesn't stop our body from changing due to the exercises we perform. Similarly, our body will change on the exercises we don't perform also. Essentially, it is our actions that dictate our growth and degradation, not our beliefs.
Am I the man I choose to be?
We don't have choice in many things, because we are thrown into a lot that we had zero control over, like where we were born, our parents, or the quality of air we are forced to breathe. Yet, we have a lot of choice when it comes to how we behave moment to moment, and how we choose to react to our experiences. We can choose to act on default, or any number of other paths forward, and the more we repeat, the more our behaviours become the preferred action, the habit, even if it isn't in our best interest, or that of others. If we believe we are a particular kind of person, but our behaviours do not align as that kind of person, we are not it - we are our behaviours. If we choose to be a particular kind of person and then act accordingly, we will move toward being that way, because we are our behaviours.
Or just the man I used to be?
The problem is that our habits are often built through our behaviours without choice, through environment and exposure to experience, and they make us feel a certain way that we identify with as "this is me", even though it is only built through repetition. It isn't actually who we need be, but it is who we currently are, because our behaviours are playing out on default. We are who we used to be because we keep on repeating the same behaviours over and over, thoughtlessly. And it feels like the right thing to do, because we are playing out the conditioning we have been programmed with.
Am I the man I want to be?
There is a difference between being and wanting to be, because wanting doesn't mean it is possible to achieve. Even if we behave according to our wanted path, it doesn't mean we are able to do all the things necessary, at the level necessary, in order to achieve it. However, if we truly want to be a certain way, we can always move toward that outcome, even if we never get all the way there. And because we want it, we could enjoy the journey and attempt and consider it a life well lived. But, the want still requires the appropriate behaviours to actually shift anything, otherwise it is toothless.
This question it keeps haunting me
This journey is from cradle to the grave and requires constant review and alignment, to ensure our behaviours are aligning with who we think we are, and who we want to be. Asking this question over and over is not enough though, because it also requires the identification and application of the next steps on the path. Construction means to build, and even the most complex and complicated of machines, is put together a part at a time, each bolt, each screw, each line of code. It is all a series of tiny actions to create a whole.
Yet, we as people are whole at birth and whole at death, without doing anything at all. We are always complete as an individual, always "me" even if the way we are put together is not even close to optimal. Even the most "broken" of us is a whole person, just functioning poorly and behaving badly. They aren't actually broken, they are playing out their programming, their set of learned behaviours, and acting accordingly.
But even if make a choice to behave differently, breaking those habits that "feel like me" can be very difficult, especially when they feel so right to perform because we identify with them. Which is why we have to keep asking ourselves if we are who we choose to be, because if we aren't acting to construct ourselves in the direction we choose, we are building in a way we do not choose. And what we end up being, the way we behave, might feel like us, but not be who we want to be at all.
We are both always complete and always under construction simultaneously, and each action and reaction is tightening or loosening of the bolts to make us more rigid as what we are today and will be tomorrow, or to reconfigure us to be different.
Many people pray for change.
Only a few intentionally behave for change.
Taraz
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