Who are you? Not what your name is or what you’re good at. You... this amazing, complicated, beautiful human being. You... capable of thinking, feeling, laughing, crying, playing, giving, loving you.

Who are you? It’s the simplest and hardest of questions. It’s the question people ask you. It’s the question you constantly ask yourself. But what is even harder than the question is the answer. Here are some very simple, common and challenging answers:

I am given or I give myself a name. But what’s in a name?

I am family. But where and with whom does my family start or end? One, two... hundreds of generations?

I am body, mind and spirit. But which is which? Where does one end and the others start?

I am a gendered being. But where does my femaleness, maleness, otherness or sameness start or end?

I have a personality. But is this a gift I receive or a project I achieve?

I receive a freedom, but who makes my choices: myself, others or just chance?

If you choose to be who you want to become, you will free that little angel within you to help you grow day by day, into who you have been created to be – an angel of light

There is no way of answering these questions without facing a harder question still: why am I here? Why among billions of galaxies there are billions of us, all trying to make ourselves happy, peaceful... The truth is that we are all here for a reason.

Our inherent beauty, our unique, unrepeatability is not an accident. Look around and be amazed. Never before and never again will there be another you. It’s the miracle gift of uniqueness.

Open your heart and discover who you are... You will discover that deep inside your heart there live a little angel and a little devil. They are both part and parcel of who you are. But there is hope. You still have a choice. You can still choose to grow beyond who you are to become who we want to be.

If you choose to be just who you are, you simply condemn yourself to be a confused, confusing and self-destructive nothingness. The little devil within you wins the day.

If you choose to be who you want to become, you will free that little angel within you to help you grow day by day, into who you have been created to be – an angel of light.

The only way to recognise who is the devil and who is the angel is to have the courage to call each by name.

The little devil’s real name is the narcissistic, destructive, self-centred love of self.

It’s when life becomes all about me – my power, my money, my comfort, my pleasure, my success, my world – my false god!

The little angel’s real name is an open-hearted, self-giving love of others. It’s when life becomes all about us – our joy, our peace, our family, our gift, our pain, our sacrifice, our love – our real God.

Who are you?

At the end of the day it is always who you choose to be – either an isolated, self-centred hell of loneliness or a loving and all embracing heaven of togetherness. The first means death. The second means life. The choice is yours!

It is this choice that makes us truly human and divine!

 

Paul Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.

 

pchetcuti@gmail.com