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You can feel proud of yourself for what you have achieved or done. For example: Succesfully managed a huge project at work, putting yourself in line for a promotion. Made a witty remark this morning. Aced your exams, got a perfect CGPA and graduated with honors. Raised 3 kids as a single parent, while working from home. Got chosen for the starring role in a play at your local theater community.Wrote a poem. Went backpacking solo in Africa.Won the gold medal in a figure skating championship. Gave up smoking. Learned a foreign language. Mastered that move in that extreme sport you took up. Baked a cake.

What do all these have in common? In each case, you worked on something, and produced a result, or created something from your own effort or work. They are acts of production, acts of creation, acts of using your own energy to transform something into something else of more value.

So when someone tells you to be proud of yourself, just for what you are, how can that be possible? After all, a large part of what you are is the result of genetic and environmental factors that you had absolutely no control over. Before conception, you had no control over who will supply the chromosomes that will ultimately codify your existence, your physical characeteristics, probably even your personality. After birth, you have almost absolutely no control over the environment that you will grow up in, the people that will play a big role and the events that will affect you in your early years. For many years after birth, what you are being formed into is largely not the product of your own effort. You played no creative role in creating the 'original you'.

So when someone tells you to be proud of what you are, of who you are, how can it be possible, especially at a tender young age? To be happy and proud with what you are, who you are, the 'you' that is largely not a product of your own creation... I think that is too much to ask.

.: 8/10/2002 :.

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