13Stop trying to be someone you're not… and start trying to be the someone you are.
You are not what you wear, or how you think. You are not what makes you laugh or cry. You are not your friends, you are not your parents. You are not your spiritual leaders or your teachers or politicians. So stop trying to be them. Why worry yourself? You will never be them. But you have the power to be something far better.
You are the way you see the world. You are your dreams, your hopes, and your opinions. You are your choices. You are what you believe. You are the only one who is like you. You will never be anything other than you.
You are not a tiny creature, a dot in the eyes of God, in the eyes of the stars that beam down on us from afar. You are yourself, something beautiful and terrible and euphoric and heartbreaking. You are a mixture of talents, a unique mix of beauty and darkness.
You are the gift you give the world. There is nothing more that is truly yours to give. Everything else, everything you own, has belonged to others before it came to you, and will belong to others long after you leave. But you? You are a one-time phenomenon, a handcrafted work of art in God's green studio. Each feature is lovingly painted, individually given.
And who are you to deny the world the miracle of yourself? Who are you to try to become like the others, to whittle away at your carefully created features to become like others?
God did not give you yourself or that whittling knife so you could whittle yourself away. He gave them to you, so you could make yourself the best gift you can possibly give. He gives you the world to learn from, to choose what you would like to build and what you would like to take away. He gives you guidance, clues along the way, His invisible hand, the hand that created you so lovingly and delicately, gently pushing you towards the right paths and the right people.
It is there when you must make the choice between what's easy and what's right. It is there when you must decide whether to hurt or be hurt. It is there when you must choose whether to swallow your pride or to cause suffering to another human being. It is there when you must make the choice between allowing despair to eat at your soul, or teaching yourself to look for the stars between the patches of velvet sky.
There is only one person you can change. And change comes through choices. Are you willing to change yourself for the sake of a better world? Not to change yourself to become others. To change yourself to love others. To change yourself to understand others. To change yourself to be an inspiration and a light to others.
You are the gift you give the world… so why not make yourself the best gift you can give?