The things we aren't but think we are

What are you really? It seems to me finding out what you really are, is the hardest thing in life. It's difficult to figure out, and it's often very hard to face the illusions we have created through a lifetime.

You are not an illusion. You really are in this world, you really exist. But what are you?

I cut off your arm, and you're still you, right? You get older, but you are still you, right? Sure, the person you were a year ago, did not contain all the stuff that you contain now. You have new memories, maybe you've changed your attitude somewhat, you may know more things and more people. But I bet you still think you are the same person.

Most of us think like that. This is our life, and the experiences we've had through life is something we've experience.

A few years back I realized that the only thing that is really me, is the thing in me that doesn't change. I can not be the person who like sports, cause a few years ago I didn't like sports. So, the I in me, must be the one who can change my attitude. I am not my attitude, I am the one who experiences my attitudes, even when they change.

I'm not the lover, the fighter, the sleeper, the thinker, the debater, the writer... I'm none of those things. I am the person who can be all those things. Like I am a person with an arm, I am a person who writes.

It's so obvious really. We even say it, but we rarely get it.

And we don't even have to get all spiritual about it. I don't know if we have souls. I don't know if we are spiritual beings. And I don't care.

What I do care about is finding ways to empower my self. And when I feel that I am something, I do not empower myself: I limit myself. Saying you are one thing, stops you from being something else. That is a limitation.

And the way out? Stop defining yourself. You can be good, you can be mean. You are not good. Neither are you mean. You are something that can be both. At different times, you have been both. You might even have been both good and mean at the same time.

Stop confusing what you can do, with what you are. Stop thinking in specifics about yourself. It limits you, and oh, by the way, it sets the world ablaze with conflict and war.

You are. And so, you can be a lot of things. But none of those things are you. They are only things that you can be. Even movie stars are not really moviestars. They are something else, that has the capacity to do what they do. Al Pacino is not the actor Al Pacino. Justin Bieber is not the singer Justin Bieber. They are, they exist, but they aren't anything. They are not even their names.

They are. Period.