Public Self

Public Self

  Today I saw this comic and felt that I should share this for all of us to think about our personal and public persona. We should not make others believe what we are not, both in a positive or a negative way. We should be showing the truth of ourselves. 

  Sometimes people feel the need to come off more then what they are in reality. For example we see in the comic that instead of working harder at being a better person it is easier to use a prop to make others believe I am a better person. By using the prop, the growth of being a better person is not pushed forward but I would say it causes the progress to stop. Why should I be better if I have people believing that I already am better, so all is good. We start to buy into what others see us as and when it is not real then we become not a reality but fake. 

   I know when I started this blog there were people who saw this other side of me. People who I have met less then 7 years ago had no idea of the life that I had with God. I never spoke or showed any part of it. It was a life time ago to me and people commented on the side of me that was not known. They must have had a very hard time reconciling this other part of my life. I know I did at times. It is easier for me to express it here. For me it would be the opposite of the comic. I am that better person in private then in company. I would use a halo that is a bit tarnished, a bit bent and slightly askew. It is not better by any means to do that but I am trying to reconcile both parts of my life into one. 

     Some people only knew the Jim, that has been away from God verses a life with God. So it is hard to allow that side to be on display without the questions and misunderstandings. My personal persona is better then my public persona. Where in the comic it is the opposite. It is an internal struggle to be the same in the personal and public world because you have to work harder to get those people to see that change as a permanent one. Even for myself I want to believe this is how my life will be and not go back to a life without God. 

    We have to be honest with ourselves before we can be honest with others in the world. If we can not look in the mirror and see ourselves as God sees us, how can we show the world that view? I am trying to see what God sees in me and how it is for me to be who I am in the world as God sees me. It is not easy to put aside the past because it does cloud our vision. It distorts who we are and it takes time to focus in prayer to see that vision. 

   It is an ongoing life change that makes us all into the person we are to be and who we are in God’s eyes and not those around us. We can use all the props to make our public persona look great but that public is not there when we stand before that mirror in the morning and see what we see alone. What reflection is more important? That reflection in the mirror or the reflection in the persons eye before you? 

Until tomorrow, God Bless, and may your persona be one within the world as your home.