Being Genuine

Kinda going off the last one, here's something I wrote a while ago. . .

It started out around four years ago. I had grown up a sheltered only child. Life was good and predominately easy. Everything was provided for me and it seemed that even outside my home, I would get whatever I wanted. Then came middle school. Whether physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you name it, middle school was marked by getting the crap kicked out of me by the cruel (and for me, relatively new) real world. Here, for the first time, I asked myself the question who I was.

And, for twelve years I have been attempting to answer that. In middle school the first among many incorrect answers came in the form of what I did. After a few months of getting pushed around by everybody, I decided it would benefit me the most to join the group that did most of the pushing, and received the least. A week later I bought my first skateboard.

Not that skaters were truly that intimidating to the other cliques at my school, it was just well understood they would fight you without any hesitation because they didn't mind getting into trouble. So, for the next five years, I was a skater. Now, truth be told, I had very little in common with anybody in that 'group'. My parents were still married, which out of the fifty or so people in our group, I was one of three that could claim that. I wasn't every very good at skating, and with my lack of gymnastic ability it was doubtful that would ever change. For the first few years in my new group I didn't do drugs. I didn't go to parties (my parents made sure of that). And my parents, discontented with my new found friends, had me at church every Sunday morning, throwing me into the sea of jocks and band geeks that comprised my youth group (or so my friends told me).

I was a skater though. At least that's what I thought. At least that's what I desperately relied on to give me some sort of identity.

High school roled on. In ninth grade I hurt my back and couldn't skate. So I took the easy identity shift from skater to 'stoner'. That lasted a little over a year, until my parents found out and emphatically changed my group of friends for me.

I decided to stick with the "extreme" genre of identity. I took up BMX. But, similarly to skating I never got very good at it. I mostly just built dirt jumps for my friends to go off of. I guess it was during this time that I started finding my identity by who I was around. That continued as I "found Jesus" my junior year of high school. More or less, I became a leader of my youth group by default being one of three active guys in my senior class. This worked as an identity for another year and a half. Then came college.

I went to a Christian school hoping that my youth group identity might hold over. It didn't. When you've been a default leader, then suddenly find yourself among 1500 other guys plenty of whom are natural ambitious leaders, there is a tendency to fall behind. I tried really hard to find a group to identify with: social clubs, Bible studies, I joined the lacrosse team. Still, none of these really worked out for me. All of them left me dissatisfied and ultimately disassociated.
So like I said earlier it started sometime during my sophomore year. . . I had seen one too many, "Hi, how are you?", "Hi, I'm perfect!", "Ok, see ya later" conversations at school. I resolutely decided to be more genuine at all costs. When people asked, no matter how superficially, I would tell them exactly how I was: "Eh, I'm alright. . ." said with the tone of enthusiasm that immediately let them know I was thoroughly dissatisfied with life.

It worked splendidly.

Before that I had hundreds of mild aquaintences who would have grown into luke-warm political friendships. And suddenly I found them pulling away one by one (maybe being pushed away. . .). My eyes finally opened to the shallowness of so many of the things which I had been seeking to find my identity in. And, for the first time in memory, I was simply being who I was (or at least trying desperately to be).

Of all the things I have discovered in life, this might be one of the grandest: I am not responsible for determining who I am!

God made me. He chose the talents he would and would not give me. To try and define myself by something he didn't give me is ludicrous. God also chose my social setting. I firmly believe that a large part of who we are is who we are around. Still, in choosing one group to stake myself on is pure stupidity.

Life is wasted when we attempt to make a name for ourselves! We are given a name. The greatest joy we can have is found in simply being who we are, who we were always meant to be.
This past year I've read a lot of books that talk about being genuine, authentic, real, etc. etc. etc. They all say that we should be, but do nothing to explain how, why, or what that looks like. Truthfully, it's probably because those are not questions that are so easily answered. But, I do think I've found the starting point: God's primary name is "I AM". When asked to define himself he begins with the concept of being. Throughout the Bible, God is never summed up, but only abstractly described. Authenticity is to realize that he intends the same for us. Never to be defined, but primarily to be.