I was reading Jamie’s blog, and I came to the expression “find myself”. This set off a trail of thought in my head that goes a little something like this:

People are pretty much who they are by the time they’re 14-16, generally. Some people a bit earlier, and some people a bit later. But the fibre of who you are is knit in those times, and you spend the rest of your life either running from that or accepting it and working with it. It’s not like you can’t ever change anything about yourself, but even the fact you might want to change something about yourself is probably a result of those formative years of your life.

It begs the question then. How does one find oneself? One already is oneself. How do you set off on a grand adventure to the great unknown to look for something that you aready are, only to find at the end of it all that you’re still the same damn person you always were, just in a different place?

It’s a good question, and needs to be asked in an age of pop-psychobabble. I think it really means something else altogether. People that set out to find themselves generally set out to find purpose, not some inner psychological place they need to get in touch with before they can lead proactive, fulfilled lives.

But how do you ever find a purpose in your life? What will you feel like fulfills you? When the adventure is over, what do you find? The things that give you purpose were already there since you were fourteen. Really what I’m saying is that your purpose is not something that determines who you are; who you are is exactly the thing that determines in what you will find your purpose. It’s simply inescapable, and I think moderns and postmoderns would do well to bear it in mind.

Not to mention the fact that you’ll never find a true purpose in yourself anyways! Where does a man or woman find purpose, real purpose? Well, in God, stupid. The chief aim of your life is what? Right - to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And until you do that, you can set off for a hundred different expiditions to a hundred different places and still be exactly the same person you were before, just with some new insights and experiences.

I honestly believe that most people can find fulfillment most places they look. Some places may be better tailored for certain types of people, but the plain facts are that modern man is much too provincial in his thinking. We tend to say, “Oh, well I need the perfect job, one that I love,” and forget that a variety of people can be completely happy doing a variety of things if they’d just let themselves be content in the place they’re at. Life partners are the same way: some of them are a perfect fit, and others aren’t at all. But I’d be comfortable saying that the vast majority of people are compatible with the vast majority of the opposite sex. The defence invariably rests on “Well, don’t you want better than good?” when they’re completely comfortable with turning around and saying “Life is what you make it!”

Well, you can’t really have it both ways. I suppose there is a bit of truth to both sides, in that you are who you are and you make your life what you make it, but the plain facts are that life is hell and most people are never going to find the perfect job or the perfect wife. And most people are never going to even know it. In fact, it’s impossible that everyone have the perfect job and wife, because that implies an absolutely ridiculous one-on-one correlation to everything in the known universe.

So you want to find yourself, do you? I hope you enjoy what you find; you’ve known it all along, after all. And you want destiny, do you? Well here’s an amazing plan for you to stick in your pipe and smoke: what if the amazing plan for your life is that you never truly find that perfect something on earth? Ever think of that? What if the plan is that everything in your life directs you to salvation and eternity by making damned sure you’re not happy with the way things are? What if your life is a monument to pain? What if your life is a testament to others that putting so many chips on the perfect this or that is a bloody waste of time?

Ah, but Jamie, don’t mind me. I’m a little angry right now. Confused, maybe. It’s not you.

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