The Cost of Owning One's Life
It takes a painful, oftentimes gruesome death of your former self and a gradual rebirth into a new creature to truly own one's self. I fondly remember this quote I read some years ago that "man cannot create himself without suffering, for he is both the sculpture and the sculptor." Though as a believer, I'd also like another version where God is constantly refining His people through the fire of trials in order to purge, cleanse, and purify them into Christlikeness. I believe it is a delicate and perfect balance of two realities—where God exercises His sovereign will upon mankind, and where man is responsible for the consequences of his own choices.
I won't make the case for the Sovereignty of God for a single reason that is very obvious—God is God, who am I to explain the mysterious ways of the Almighty?
But I would make the case for the latter, the responsibility of man to sculpt his own self into a masterpiece that he would approve, that he would respect, and—if humanly possible, without a hint of conceit—even admire and find noble.
What does it take to own one's life?
What does it mean to own one's life?
I believe those are fundamental questions that our Being demands to be answered. What is my life? Am I a slave to my past? My biological makeup? My family? My memories? My environment?
Who am I? What is my life? What am I here for?
One must consistently ask these things, and I believe all of us do, as we go on in our lives. And these are no doubt a shattering set of questions that seem to rock quite violently the bedrock of our identity. It shakes us, depresses us, disturbs us, unsettles us. It is a source of a great deal of anxiety. Unless you have perfectly figured yourself out, in that case, good for you.
Around 2018, I became engrossed with the works of Dr. Jordan Peterson, I learned about him through an exceptionally brilliant online peer who eventually became a dear friend of mine. Dr. Peterson is highly interested in the psychological study of individuals, from their biological tendencies to varying temperaments, to the study of history (especially World War II), even to the study of religion and its underlying archetypal values which human beings hold sacred since the days of old regardless of whether we deem ourselves religious or not.
Dr. Peterson believes that responsibility gives life meaning. To be able to bear one's existence despite the unavoidable tragedies and miseries of life, one has to carry his own cross, so to speak, and not just carry it but to bear one's own life with dignity and fortitude. To always speak the truth. To not lie nor partake in falsehood. He believes that speaking the truth and voluntarily taking responsibility will help us earn a sacred sense of dignity and respect in our existence—perhaps, even happiness.
I would love to share this quote from the timeless Dostoevsky from his book The Brothers Karamazov,
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.”
I am meaning to write this blog to organize my thoughts. To see if I have learned anything at all over the course of the years of my personal study. To see if I truly spoke the Truth and lived by the Truth. To see if I have finally shouldered my responsibility of being alive, and have owned my life as a consequence.
I have been through a lot of death and dying within me. From dying to self, dying to my own pre-held principles, dying to my own emotions, dying to my ignorance and arrogance, dying to my past, dying even to my own father and mother's approval (definitely not literally, but in a psychological sense that they are the primal authority whose approval little children yearn to have, which grown up men and women like myself no longer have to be bound upon. After all, one must walk his own path, not the path laid out for him by someone else.) But, perhaps, that which died had to die, in the hopes that a better Being must come forth. Some days I didn't know if I will survive the refining, the dying. But I kept trusting God. I trust in His Blessed Name. I only have my mustard seed of faith with me, and maybe that's all He needs. I have nothing else in me but withered roots waiting for the fire of purging. I must only surrender to His Truth. Veritas Dei Vincit. His Truth shall always conquer.
Suffering is agonizing. The cost of owning one's life is to die constantly, daily. Yet in my dying, I became more alive. More and more, my life became something real to me. I now walk in Liberty which was a strange concept to me before. In my dying, I no longer became a byproduct of my environment, of my past memories, of the things that happened to me. Those things died in the refining fire. They were chipped off in the process of sculpting. My soul is being made into a clean slate, a new sense of sight that is able to look at the world in the light of Truth, no longer stumbling blindly in the dark. There are days I do not recognize my old self, it is like a stranger looking from a blurred glass window. But always in my life, I see the gracious, merciful, ever-faithful hand of my God changing me from being an unbeliever to a believer; my own personal, difficult journey of unlearning and learning the foundational values and meaning of being a human, a created being—meeting halfway to reveal who I have now become. A new creature now walking in the newness of life.
To take ownership of one's own life, one must die first. And when he dies, he must be born again. And when he has been born again, he must surrender solely to the Truth, and the Truth shall set him free.
