Reflections

Thomas Merton wrote:

"Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny… This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth."

"To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.”

I'm a firm believer that we are responsible for creating our own life, our own identity, and our own destiny like Merton said. The first paragraph says just that... that we actively participate in our own creation when we choose the truth. We don't have to become someone else, we don't have to be copycats simply mirroring others - we have to become our own "originals" even if we are full of imperfections and weaknesses. The goal: to become the best person that we can be, but to become ourselves, no matter what. Maybe better said: to find ourselves - to find who we really are...

The person that many times we think we are is not really us. "There's a silent self within us (Merton also said) whose presence is disturbing because it is so silent: it can't be spoken. It has to remain silent." He mentions that the problem in our culture is that we are surrounded by sound and generalized noise; so we live in a state of constant semi-attention. We cannot be fully present and yet we're not entirely absent; we're not fully withdrawn and yet not completely available. Let's pay close attention to these wise words.