Someone Else

I read more of Blue Like Jazz tonight. To the author, one of the driving forces is the desire to be someone else, someone different. He claims that everyone feels this way, and that if there were someone who did not feel this way, that he would stick out like a sore thumb.

I'm not necessarily content with who I am, but I do not want to be someone different. I've had friends tell me they've "changed" over the years, or that I've "changed". I always retort with, "I haven't changed, so much as grown, or progressed." I'm not the same person I was, but I'm not so different that you wouldn't recognize me if you stood me next to my former self. I've always known myself to be different from other people, and I've always felt that this was one aspect that the difference manifested itself.

The author's point is that this desire to be new, to be baptized, is what draws us to God. We make a choice at some point, to live a life controlled by sin, or to leave that life behind and follow God. Maybe I made that choice long before I could understand what it meant.