Quotes about Individuality

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?' "4 The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, "the will to be oneself.

The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, "the will to be oneself."5

no other person has ever lived your life. You may be wondering what will happen if you engage in this journey of emotionally healthy spirituality, if you take seriously God's purpose for you to increasingly live faithfully out of the life he has given you.

God never asks us to annihilate the self. We are not to become "non-persons" when we become Christians. The very opposite is true. God intends our deeper, truer self, which he created, to blossom as we follow him.

The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone else's life, or at least someone else's expectations for us. This does violence to ourselves, our relationship with God, and ultimately to others.

For this reason the famous Hasidic story of Rabbi Zusya remains so important for us today: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?

The problem was that I wasn't truly free. Freedom comes when we no longer need to be somebody special in other people's eyes. We are to be content to be popular with him alone.

I may not agree with you or you with me. Yet I can remain in relationship with you. I don't have to detach from you, reject you, avoid you, or criticize you to validate myself. I can be myself apart from you.

God has shaped and crafted us internally—with a unique personality, thoughts, dreams, temperament, feelings, talents, gifts, and desires. He has planted "true seeds of self" inside of us. They make up the authentic "us." We are also deeply loved. We are a treasure.

God has made each of us unique and different.

Few of us know the experience of being loved for being just who we are.

Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have — and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.