Finding The Real You

Just remembered a comic someone once told me about. In it, a man is climbing a mountain looking for his 'real self' when he comes face to face with it- and it is an accountant in a suit. It is funny only in that I think it is what so many of us fear. What if we get to the end of the journey, put in the blood, sweat and tears and find out that who we really are is less than what we had bargained for?

Maybe I don't have a queer bone in my body. Maybe there is nothing interesting about me at all. Maybe it is all smoke and mirrors. Maybe I'm not quirky, I'm not left-of-centre, I'm not funny, I'm not at all unusual. Maybe I am the norm.

One of my friends gave her son a birthday card that said that 'Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself'. But what is it that I am creating? Do I have the right tools? The right materials? The knowledge? Can I buy an instruction kit, a masterplan? Is it always going to be trial and error, just bumbling along cluelessly going 'well, that was a disaster, what to try next?'. Deconstruct and reconstruct, melt it down and start again, scrape it down to the bare canvas and get my oils back out. Will anyone ever appreciate my masterpiece?