What Am I?

When I was a child, my view of the world was small. I saw myself, my family, then my grade one class and trips to the supermarket. As I got older that view expanded to include the place I worked a first job, then the second and along the way, the friends that I attached to myself. All these became part of who I saw myself as. And swirling in and around all the symbols of me, were the things that I did, the ideas that came into my mind. And mostly I thought about myself and how events in my immediate world affected me. We are all like that, and it is a natural progression and like all progressions, it grows and changes and over time we "become more".

But there comes a point when all of that peaks and the refinement begins and it is at this point that we begin to understand who we are, what we are, what we have been and what we chose to be and in many cases, why we are here. We've all done things that were not noble, where the doing was prompted by selfishness alone and particularly when we were or are young. But these events can become the contrast that enables us to see the person that we wish to see ourselves as, in our later years. Which option, which person do we chose, to be the real us? The person we are in that moment, or someone kinder, gentler, someone "better".

It has been said that you are what you chose to be and if all you have is the "right now", than what are you right now? Are you continuing to be thoughtless, chaotic, allowing life to happen to you, living your life in fragments, because sometimes you are patient, and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you are compassionate and sometimes you have no care for others. A fragmented life cannot be a joy-filled life. In those moments where your choice is only for you and comes at the expense of anothers happiness, how can you experience joy?

Available to all of us is an experience of a life of wisdom, compassion, joy. We only have to make that choice in this moment because this moment is all there is. The past doesn't exist and the future is only a fantasy. But right now is....right now. Right now is all that there is. So right now, how do you see yourself? How do you choose to see yourself? You can choose to be a compassionate person, and make the same choice in the next moment and the next....The essential ingredient in all of this is the ability to imagine the greatest and highest vision of yourself that you can come up with. We are body, mind and spirit. Do we let our body make our decisions, our mind, or do we allow the spirit to take control?