"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." A reflection

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." I find it a curious thought, particularly given the propensity of folks my age to go about "finding" themselves in all manner of activities, occupations, and adventures. Goodness knows, I've had the notion myself frequently enough. But Mr. Shaw's quote strikes a note with me that does seem to carry weight, and so a reflection on "finding" and "creating" in this context seems warranted.

First on finding. To find is to discover, be it a thing, a person, a place, or a station in life. It can also involve abstractions, such as finding a rumor to be true, a description to be false, or an unexpected occurrence to be suitable or unsuitable to one's disposition. Finding can be active (searching), or passive (unexpected discovery). Both can happen to those involved in the business of "finding," or anyone for that matter. As Isaac Asimov once said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

It would seem then that the common parlance "to find one's self" involves a search, active and passive, to discover the things for which a person is capable of doing and being. So we go off on an adventure, or put ourselves in unusual circumstances to see what qualities and interests come to the fore.

Now on creating. To create is to cause or be a cause of a thing to be made. It involves production, often of something unique and related to the "creator." As with "finding" there does appear to be active and passive forms of "creating," such as writing a story in the former, and unintentionally wreaking havoc with it in the latter. We create with intention as well as by accident, sowing seeds by design as well as by ignorance.

In either case, creating anything seems to have an effect upon the creator, in sometimes large and small ways; that as creators it would seem, we mold and are molded by our creations.

To summarize, to "find" one's self seems to involve a search for some quality from within by employing novel situations to bring out underlying capacity which normally remains latent. To "create" one's self seems to involve a process by which making things changes aspects of who we are. Both processes appear to work by intention as well as accident, and involve transformation through experience. "Becoming" might therefore be imagined as both an act of will and reaction to circumstances.

Of course this could all be plate of bull-cookies.

But I think Shaw's quote points to an essential question related to how we might live our lives: do we become who we are by reacting to the world, or by acts of will and intent? Was Tom "Stonewall" Jackson correct when he penciled into his book of maxims, "You may be whatever you resolve to be?" In short, do we make ourselves, or do we find ourselves?

To this I can't offer a definite answer, but sometimes metaphor helps. For whatever else it is, life does also seem to be a kind of adventure. We make "goals" and plan "expeditions," (as any good adventurer does), but history suggests improvisation is almost always necessary at some point. We teach ourselves the languages, customs, and geography of the lands through which we intend to travel, but through the intervention of the unexpected and unforeseen we discover things about our self we never quite imagined; that we are a little stronger, a little more patient, and a little more courageous than ordinary life would lead us to believe. In short, we can make ourselves ("resolve to be") excellent adventurers, but adventuring also has a way of doing that, for better and worse. So I wonder then whether life is not just about finding ourselves, or  making ourselves, but having the wisdom to know which the times and season requires.

Happy Thursday, friends :)