Becoming Who You Are

In Parker Palmer’s excerpts from Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, he writes about how we need to learn to be ourselves. Many people today, especially teenagers, struggle with this concept. Teenagers, in particular, are often overwhelmed and are thinking about everything that they have to do. They are under so much pressure and feel like they need to “fit in.” They often ask themselves, “Who should I be?” rather than, “Who am I?”

I agree with Palmer when he says, “From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood
 and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode.” We all have a purpose on this earth, and we are all called to do something. Figuring out what that something is is very difficult. When we are feeling lost, we can think back to our past and remember what we enjoy about ourselves. While on this long journey to figuring out who we really are, we grow closer to God and begin to “decode” our lives.