There are many nuggets of wisdom in the writings of Dr. Seuss but perhaps none seem more obvious, but yet are more difficult to put into practise, than this one. After all, we spend our lives, once the innocence of childhood has passed, trying to be someone else. We try to be smarter, prettier, thinner, more interesting, kinder, …you name it, than anyone else.
In that trying to be someone we are not, we lose sight of that person who we really are. That person who is so unique that there is no one like them in the whole world! A person who has insights and talents that are crying to be let out - and we keep them locked away because they aren’t good enough, because someone might laugh, because we might be seen as bragging, because we might be seen as wrong!
And yet that person, with all those faults and strengths is who we are. It is how we are made to be! Teresa of Ávila actually said the same thing in the 1500s, she just put it a little differently… “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ's compassion to the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, yours are the hands with which he is to bless men[sic] now.”
We are each unique. And so we are challenged to use this uniqueness to pass on our unique brand of compassion to the world. We are not called upon to be a ‘Peter” or a ‘Paul’ or even a ’Jesus”. We are called upon to be ourselves, that person who dwells inside us all, the one who we are often loathe to let out.
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