You Have Permission to Be Yourself

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Do you have the courage to be yourself? If not, you are cheating something far greater than just yourself…

Here’s why: Every single person in the world was born for a reason.

Every. Single. One. This includes people who have failed, who have fallen into addiction, who are lost, who have taken the hard way at every fork in the road, who have done bad things, who have muddled through every day bored and listless, who have gotten sick, who have sat and played a lot of video games … you name it. Every single person was created with a specific positive job to do in the world. Obviously, we need to work on repairing our mistakes, but just because you erred doesn’t mean you are an error. No matter what we have done, we retain a pilot flame that is always alive — our unique mission in this world. This is true regardless of nationality, race, and religion. The world won’t be perfect until every person on it makes his or her unique positive contribution.

A note to skeptics…

Skeptics will probably ask us now about the universally extreme example, “Well, how could Hitler have been created for a reason by a Divine Higher Power? Wouldn’t it have been better if he had not been born?” The answer: We don’t know why certain acts of evil befell the world. What we do know is that evil is a choice, and he made a choice to create and perpetuate evil. In other words, he could have chosen otherwise. What if he had put his passion into something productive rather than destructive? The same could be asked about all the mass-murderers in history (people like Stalin, Pol Pot, Paul Kagame, Slobodan Milosevic, and now ISIS). The mystics teach that even the darkest evil has within it a spark of divine goodness (or else it couldn’t exist). Albeit, the spark is completely concealed; like a grain of pure sand in a murky swamp, the good spark is engulfed and controlled by the evil. But it is always there.

If not for yourself, do it for the world.

When you are not yourself, you are robbing the world of what you were meant to contribute to it. This might sound harsh, but who are you to deprive the world of your indispensable actions and energy? Please consider that the things you love, and the things you are passionate about, and your unique personality and circumstances are not accidental — they were given to you in their own specific configuration to put you, and only you, in a position of knowledge and understanding that nobody else has. Not one person can stand exactly in your shoes. “Being yourself” isn’t a coping strategy for eccentrics — it is a Divine command to every individual.

 


Go deeper into this subject: An Exercise to Find Out Who You Are | You Were Sent to Earth With a Mission | Are You Living Up to Your Potential? | Are You Unique? | Individuality in Judaism


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Helen Dudden
4 years ago

I think becoming further disabled is a blessing. I’m me, it’s restricting and every day things become a more challenging option.
Those like me without accessible places of worship have lost the chance to be part of.
How can changes be made?

David Harold Chester
1 month ago

Philosophy of change

Change brings pain,
pain brings suffering,
suffering brings tolerance,
tolerance brings thinking,
thinking brings knowledge,
knowledge brings understanding,
 understanding brings wisdom
and wisdom makes life bearable.

The Meaningful Life Center