Finding Significance

At this moment of life of transitions, I dig deep a lot about who I am and seeing where I have been and where I need to be going. I reevaluate things and question everything that I have come to know about myself.

Some people tell me that this is not too good of a thing to do too much questioning when I start being too introspective about myself to the point that I can easily self-destruct into discouragement or self-doubt. But my philosophy is that everything about me should be tested by fire to know its genuity. I do not necessarily put myself into trouble just for the sake testing myself, but rather a curious moment of recalling the trail that I have made thus far in this journey. Ultimately, it is much more than the genuity of a person I am, but rather the work of God in my life that is unexplainable.

Being in this country, there is the sense of perspective that is to put oneself out there to be noticed. This is the whole idea of resume writing where we make ourselves marketable and valuable, even to the point of twisting words to enhance our inherent skills or training. But coming from a culture that often frowns on such a behavior and perceive as being boastful, it always been a challenge for me. So as I tweak my resume and trying to adapt to this perspective of self-marketing, I am also trying to balance it with truth and honesty. I hate to tell people that I can do something well but not being able to perform. I want to be able to assure people in what my capabilities are, and deliver exceptional results.

All these thinking has revolved around the idea of who I am and what I am capable of in my significance. Understanding that God create us all with significance for His glory and purpose, there is a place where we want to know what we are created for, hence, the popularity of the Purpose Driven Life.

So the biggest question that lingers in my mind now is figuring out my significance of my existence and what I contribute. I often tell people that I can have a lot of interests, and what I mean by interests it not merely just that I like these things but rather having to pour in heart and passion into.

I started my first passion in art at an early age of 4 or 5 and I have drawn anything and everything that caught my attention. I founded my significance at that young age in art, and people around me knew that about me. This is the very same thing with music when I became a teenager. Then came into writing, to filming, to story-telling, to cooking, to design and the list goes on. My passions are things that I would always be proud of, they all each have brought me to a place of understanding my creativity and the wonders of who I am as a person; describing my capabilities.

That being said, I often describe myself very differently when I talk to different people. Many at times when it is just making small talk, I only bring up my individual interests because it is the first point of contact but I never dwell with those interests, whether it is music, food, art or anything else because I felt that as much as I love doing those things, my strength do not lie with these interests but in something else deeper. I have often found over and over again through my evaluation, that my strength lies in my mental capacity. Be it a cognitive or philosophical in its sense, my mind has been my strength.

Even though I am widely a feeling kind of personality, the handicap of my heart or sentiments needed to be matched up with my mind to keep me in control and my mind has been the very things that have helped me through seasons when my heart has been erratic in its nature.

Very often now I would dial down on my interests with people, unless for first contact purpose. I have nothing to prove with my interests or passions. Even among friends, I hardly bring up things about art, music, food, design or what not because it has somehow become somewhat superficial to me. My interests only so much define my achievements, but it does not fully describe me as a person and who I truly am in my significance.

At this very moment, I feel like my significance is hidden because there are very little platforms for me to display or make use of it. People that come and go in my life, people that have encountered me, tells me of which category of people do they fall into. As I seek for significance in who I am and desire to be seen in my significance; not in my interests, my achievements, my hobbies, but in the person that I am. I appreciate people that are willing to dig deep into me and see me for who I am, it tells me how they value someone. This is not always an easy thing to do, simply because it requires time and perseverance.

Someone once told me that "it is more important to be than to do". It is more important to become the sincerity of our pursuit than to just do it out of obligation. Like the condemning Pharisees that only performs but not living truthfully, or to only make acts of kindness but lacks the heart to be sincerely kind. Although actions do define us, but much to it are just the surface and possibly superficial if that is all there is to our evaluation to a person. And in time, true colors come out to attest to our outward actions. So as much as what I do on the outside is important to showing the world who I am, I am ever more intrigued by who am I inside that makes bigger significance.

In my understanding of my significance, I am grateful for people who stuck with me in seeing my significance that is beyond interests deep. I am grateful to those that broke away from superficiality and approached me out of their comfort zone. These are the people I will be faithful to, these are the people I am willing to sacrifice for, these are the ones I will stand by to my last breath, these are the people I will uphold in my fervent prayers to God.

So as I do pray that my outward actions paint a face of my personhood, but that my inner self, screams my significance.