Deconstruct Your Life
Deconstruction is the process of tearing down the walls of information, advice, and thoughts around you in order to see what is clear about yourself. The world is full of people who can offer a lending voice, but what we often need is an ear that will listen to the inside. Of course, I more than anyone will tell you the value of advice, of seeking out wisdom from others to be the best that we can be, but I also know that we must also find the introspection we need to truly see ourselves.
This is a discipline, if you would like to call it that. It’s a behavior, and it is certainly more natural and carefree for others, but at the end of the day it is a practice. A major aspect of deconstruction is seeing life through the lens of your own worldview. Too often we see others and admire them, but our admiration quickly becomes a transformation to be like them. Since we have not fully understood ourselves (or do not want to face the insecurity of ourselves) we take on the personality and values of someone else and tweak them to meet our life’s circumstances. This happens all the time, even if it is implicitly.
I remember first leaving for college and spending a year in Montana with a lot of outdoorsy, adventurous, people. While I was adventurous and loved being outdoors, I didn’t follow through with other aspects — wearing Patagonia, loving trucks, hunting, fishing, etc. Yet I found myself taking on their personality traits and interests, telling myself that I should buy more outdoorsy brands and get a gun to go hunting when I got back to Ohio. Long story short, I found out that I was changing parts of myself to meet the traits of people around me, even though inside it was nothing that I wanted to do. I’ve done this many times on a small scale, looking around for other people and trying to be a different version of them instead of being the best version of me.
We should always be able to separate the people around us from the person we see inside ourselves. It’s one of the reasons why I am so fond of daily self-reflection, because without time to understand who you are, you begin to form yourself to the culture and people you see around you. You must be able to deconstruct the world and be fully confident in the person that God has created you to be, because there is no one else with the exact DNA strand as you. Be proud of that, not in a self-centered way, but understanding that you do not have to spend your life pretending to be someone else. Hear the world, learn from it, and use it to help you, but always know who exactly you are.
