Youth emerge from their infancy pretty much instinctively. With encouragement from parents and other siblings we learn to walk and talk and begin to ‘become,’ with very little or no conscious thought to the process. Yes, we express pride with a gleeful smile or laugh when we can first run and stay upright but it is not like we are controlling our natural growing process. Each of us come into our own—start directing our own development, so to speak, at different times. Some of us arrive at adulthood without knowing what we want to be when we grow up. Some of us still haven’t decided that, even when we are old and feeble. Whatever has and will happen to those who are undecided was and is mostly a matter of happenstance. However, most of us, at some point in our youthful development start, maybe ever so slowly, to realize that we can direct what we want to do, how we want to do it and when. Thank goodness we are all different with different likes and different skills as well as different personalities. Those who see what another is doing and try to emulate them may never be better than mediocre at being someone their not. Those of us who seek out our own ‘Place in the Sun’ identify those things that we are good at, the things we enjoy and then practice those traits, until a high level of skill is attained. we are, essentially, self molding personalities.
Harvey Mackay said about developing a profitable business model, “Like a great sculptor who chips away at a massive piece of marble to reveal its simple beauty, try to approach matters at work to get to the very core of the issue.” The thought that occurred to me as I read that, was that we, too, can follow the same simple advice in self-development. We, in our youth, are much like a massive piece of marble with a self-directing intelligence. We can chip away at our own development (sculpture): physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, by the process of introspection. We can stand back from ourselves and try to see ourselves as others might see us. Every little flaw that may never be seen from our close-up view may come to light and those are the things that we want to continue to chip away at until we are corrected or, at least, improved. Isn’t that precisely what a sculptor does? He stands back every little while to view his piece from a different angle or perspective. If he only had the up close view he would never be able to see his work the way others might see it. Nietzsche, the philosopher most closely associated with existentialism, refers to life as a noble ideal, “Your life, he argues, is an unwritten book that only you can write. Or, he says, visualize your life as a kind of artistic project, except that you are both the sculptor and the clay.”
Parents, teachers and spiritual leaders are also involved in the sculpting of youth. However, as individuals we need to take the primary responsibility in sculpting our own masterpiece, ‘themselves.’ We may come to realize that we need a little more education, more physical training. We may need to go to the mountain more often, to develop ourselves spiritually. The process of introspection is a sculpting tool that is not used enough. Many great people know their own weaknesses and consciously work to chip away at those weaknesses until they are, at least, minimized. Too many of us are satisfied with using a large chisel and the big mallet without ever refining ourselves with the use of finer tools that define our features in greater detail. In the process of creating ourselves we are in the process of fulfilling our God given destiny. We came here to this earth to attempt to perfect ourselves that we might be best prepared for the next step the Father has in store for us. For whatever intelligence and refinement we attain unto in this life will go with us to the next. Conversely, whatever intelligence we fail to attain in this life will represent a loss or deficiency for us in the next. Our finished sculpture (ourselves) can be our masterpiece, and the value it represents will, one day, be placed on it by ourselves when we finally unveil it before the judge of mankind. May Heavenly Father bless us that we might pay attention to detail, in the process of creating ourselves, while we sojourn on this beautiful earth.
“Genius lies in all of us just waiting to be unleashed” —Anon