Becoming.

I can remember times in my life when I've thought to myself, "If only I could be like...." and wanting to experience the lives of people I knew. As if having a more stable family, better opportunities, a different hair style, or a better voice would make me a better person. I think it's so easy to compare ourselves to other people -- focusing on what we don't have to what we perceive that those other people do have in their lives.

I've come to learn the silliness of that. I've learned that when I focus on what I don't have and think only about what other people do have, I'm discounting all of the really neat things that make me who I am. Rarely do I consider that just as I compare myself to others, other people might be doing the same thing about me.

I've come to learn that accepting who I am (weird quirks and all) is a process. It's not something that is magically done or something that people innately have. Accepting who I am is a process of experiencing my strengths and my weaknesses, and finding a way to appreciate them as a whole. To accept myself as a whole. There may be things I don't care for, or I might discover things that I'd like to improve, but I also know that thinking "If only I could be like..." robs me of my uniqueness to this world.