Recently I started to read And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham. Over the weekend, I came across this passage:
“For many Americans, to see Lincoln whole is to glimpse ourselves in part—our hours of triumph and of grace, and our centuries of failures and of derelictions. This is why his story is neither too old nor too familiar. For so long as we are buffeted by the demands of democracy, for so long as we struggle to become what we say we already are”
It’s fascinating to consider Meacham’s idea of becoming “what we say we already are.” This applies to a nation, as he observes, but also to human beings.
Sometimes how we perceive ourselves is not in alignment with who we think we are in the present moment. Sometimes our ego, pride, anxieties, selfishness, etc., impacts our words and actions and creates a gap between who we think we are and the person on display. One idea is to know “what we say we already are” so well that when we become a stranger to ourselves and to others we are able to reintroduce ourselves to our better self.
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