Liking Who I Am

Yesterday a friend was complaining about how hard her life was and how one bad thing after another kept happening. And I flashed back to some of the stories of the inmates in a medium-high security prison in which we had conducted More To Life Weekends. Many of the inmates were either abused as children or watched others being abused. It was a way of life, in which there were no other obvious role models, except for TV, which had no direct relevance to the circumstances in which most of them lived.

So what many learned was either to be the abuser or be the "abusee." In the moment of hearing my friend's hard-luck story, as well as her negative self-portrayal, I remembered some of the same kinds of devastating self-portraits painted by the inmates. Whether they were the abuser or the abused, their self concept was abusive … profanely abusive.

In one instance, one young man in his early 30s stated, "I am a criminal." And Brad Brown, the lead trainer, asked in a soft voice, "So what do criminals do?" The inmate said, "We break the law." So we worked with which comes first – being defined as a criminal? or breaking the law? Over the weekend, the inmates slowly detached themselves from their self-directed doom. And many of the inmates finally told the truth about who they fundamentally were … most of them claiming they were a "child of God" (religion becomes very important to a lot of inmates while they are in prison).

Then Brad asked in that same soft voice, "And does a child of God murder? deal drugs? rape? break the law?" They got it. Proclaiming myself to be a criminal dictates my choices, unconsciously. Proclaiming myself to be a child of God prescribes different choices.

The relevance to My Life is: when I like myself, I am without artifice, and I treat myself and others with respect and honor – which affirms that I am likable (to myself). And the reverse is also true: when I don't like myself, I tend to behave dishonorably to myself and to others, which in turn, confirms that I am not worth honoring. 

Telling the truth about who I am … REALLY … is my way Home. That limits my self indulgence and compels my way forward as a true Warrior of the Spirit.