How to Reinvent ourselves

There is much talk today of reinventing ourselves. Of course at the superficial level of cosmetics and outward appearance, something of this reinvention may well be achievable, yet much of what motivates this whole fashionable enterprise is little better than a deep sense of insecurity the desire to look younger, or slimmer, or whatever. For example, those who resort to plastic surgery, a facelift or tattoos, are often motivated by this deep sense of insecurity, and a lack of self-worth, in the misguided belief that what is superficial will be impressive and make them more acceptable and attractive to others. Yet all such attempts at self-improvement beg the question: What should the finished product look like? as well as that earlier question, Who am I and why was I created? For surely, if I have failed to come to terms with who I truly am, warts and all, and who I was created to be, then how on earth can I ever know what the so-called reinvented features, let alone the more subtle attributes, should become?

What should I change from the original; what will I dump, cut out in any literal or metaphorical plastic surgery, and what will I retain of the original product? So the recurring question whenever it comes to change and reinvention, or whatever: In which direction and to what end?

On a journey of any kind it is surely the final destination which determines direction and all decision-making on the way. We are out on the road and come to a T-junction. Shall we turn right or shall we turn left? The answer to that question is totally determined by our ultimate destination. Until we have some clue of where we want to end up, the route we should take and how we will get there has little or no meaning.

Since the work of Darwin in the nineteenth century, there has been an increasing preoccupation with the question of the origins of the human race. Of course that is an important question. It is far more important, however, at this stage when the future destiny of the human race is so much more in our hands, to formulate the destination of all our evolutionary struggles. For neither travel nor change in themselves necessarily imply progress. Where are we evolving to? What sort of world do we want to leave for our grandchildren? Where is it all leading? In what sort of direction are so-called developing countries being encouraged to develop? And all this, when humankind is daily acquiring ever more wonderful skills to prolong and enrich life in so many ways. Yet, still, there is no escape from the disturbing fact that destination defines decisionmaking all that T-junction business and at precisely the time when so many ethical and ideological decisions have to be made at so many turning points and junctions in the course of the human journey!

At the present time, its as though humanity is on a journey to nowhere, driving on a hunch, intuition, or just pot luck or doing what comes naturally and hoping for the best. Yet subconsciously as a race, there is an underlying, largely unspoken fear that some of our decisions may either in the short term or the longer term prove to be irreversible as we teeter on the very brink of being able, in hidden and anonymous laboratories, to clone and create, let alone re-create life in various forms.

Are we in danger of becoming in the words of the Beatles lyric of the last century nowhere people, living in a nowhere land, making lots of nowhere plans, not knowing where were going to?

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SOURCES: The Transforming Power of Prayer