JOIN USGeorge Bernard Shaw once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” These words take special significance when we relate it to the few people who in creating themselves lived the highest possible life they could have hoped to live.
Mother Teresa, the Nobel Laurette, who dedicated her life in serving the poorest of the poor is a classic illustration of how in creating oneself, one raises from good to better and then to best. Leading a settled life as a nun and headmistress at Loreto Convent in Kolkata, she would still not reach the full potential of her life until she created herself as the Saint of the Gutter. There was no stopping this noble lady from there on till she breathed her last. Scores of marginalized and abandoned poor would see God’s compassion and love through Mother Teresa as she cared for them. The words of a dying man whom Mother Teresa retrieved from the gutters and bathed and clothed and fed, “I have lived like an animal, but now I am dying like an angel,” is telling of her work and life.
Baba Amte, another altruistic person, who in creating himself from the profession of a lawyer to a social activist, uplifted the down trodden giving dignity and life to thousands of lepers and underprivileged people of our country.
While it is true that a good majority of us could never reach the heights that these self-sacrificing titans have, we all possess enough capacity to rise above our current levels. Settling at our jobs, limiting our potentials and putting a ceiling on our capacity to love and to reach out to others in compassion is akin to putting away prized gifts in the attic and letting it rust and rot until the gifts become unusable.
As Steve Goodier said, “Creating yourself may be the most vital and important job... It is the task of every day. And it is also an important gift you give yourself - the gift of creating the person you want to be.” Mark Twain implied the same sentiments when he remarked, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”