Who Are You?

WHO ARE YOU?

Oftentimes, it is our desire to be linked with prospering identities, those who have carved a niche for themselves in given areas of their lives. We feel good when we are called so and so, “the second”, “the one-millionth”; there is a tremendous excitement when we are told we act like popular celebrities, dress like certain named pop-stars, or talk like those we’ve been trying to imitate for ages. We could live and breathe for recognition based on someone else's budding or budded identity.

Going under the knife to possess their physiognomic features is the rosiest of the aspirations. Those of us who are yet to watch a dollar fly away permanently into carved noses and sumptuous bodies have found relief in make-overs. Like water, we bear the tint of several identities as our taste buds evolve. Such is life, anyway.

Value what matters

I can't agree more with Malcolm Forbes, who said that people tend to overvalue what they are not, and undervalue what they are. Giving due exemption to identity crisis, which queues up in the list of psychosocial problems that commonly plague adolescents, consciously and zealously giving up one's element, name, personality, belief and values for the seemingly most popular identity begs for no clinical examination but for some eye-opening knowledge to the truth of self, and its importance.

Truth is, we can’t be someone different in a different body. We can’t offer our sense of realness on the altar of fine-tuning some identity quite strange to our innate personality; the harder we try to be, act, look, live like that “model”, the deeper we are stuck in the rut of obscurity: who knows you, when you are a wannabe of another? Sincerely, we only aid in announcing and emblazoning our model in the place where it should have been us, with no affiliate fee nor advert benefits. Business has never been in support of such ignorance.

What is your name? Who are you? Are you making mistakes to be a better you, or are you playing it safe in accordance with the hyped written version of some mortal like you? Jesus Christ isn't in support of dumping your own cross, for another's. He said, “...carry your cross and follow me.”

Esau and Jacob

My pastor, the Reverend Ogboso Ejindu made a startling revelation on the story of the identity theft carried out by Jacob in order to steal his brother, Esau’s blessings in Genesis 27. When his half-blind father requested to know if it was Esau that was really before him, Jacob answered in the affirmative, holding strongly onto the name (identity) and asserting the stolen position as the firstborn son. Isaac, their father had to make pronouncements of blessings upon Esau whose identity he believed to be standing before him, and not on Jacob, who was shadowed by the stolen identity.

It wasn’t until in Genesis 32 that he, Jacob realised that he had no blessings to himself as the real man, Jacob. He had lived in falsehood and nothing ever seemed to work through falsity. He got another chance to be real, and he admitted to his identity as Jacob, which got him the elevated status as one who prevailed against God (Israel). When you believe in the real you, you blossom and can only get better. You’re able to identify what your problems are, and face them with the uniqueness of your personality.

Be proud of you

So, can we just be proud of our being, our name, our person, and stop stealing or conforming? Whosoever you are, learn to be the best version of that. The challenge we usually encounter in our businesses and relationships summarily points to desiring to do what we cannot continue doing successfully, and taking leaps that are not designed for us. That they appear sweet doesn’t mean they are sweet. It is now a cliché to say to someone, “mind your business”. Make your name fruitful. Make your path worth being remembered. Admire people but do not pattern your ideals, and your purpose after theirs blindly. You’ll lose at the tail-end.

On Sunday, April 9, 1967, in the New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., Martin Luther King Jr. gave a resounding classical speech whose excerpt still lends meaning to lives attuned to their purpose and identity. He declared, “If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

Who are you?

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