You Do Not Have to Become Anything

Most of a human life is spent trying to become something: calmer, better, further along. But you were never made of becoming. You are made of being, and being asks nothing of you.

Look at any ordinary week and count how much of it is spent becoming. Becoming fitter, becoming calmer, becoming the person who has finally sorted things out. Even the quiet hour at the end of the day often goes on planning the next improvement. There is nothing wrong with any one of these efforts. The trouble is the loop they form. One becoming leads to the next, and the next, and the loop never closes, because the one thing it can never deliver is the feeling of having arrived.

In my book I Forgive You I called this the vicious loop of becoming. Almost everyone is caught in it, most without knowing. It chains you to the outer world, because the outer world is where becoming happens: the job, the body, the reputation, the plan. And the outer world runs on time. Time gives, and time takes. A day comes when the ability to become anything at all begins to fail. Strength fades, choices narrow, and in the end the becoming stops altogether, whether you are ready or not.

That sounds like the saddest day in a life, and it is meant to be the most freeing. When all your efforts to get away from yourself stop, you no longer have to chase yourself either. There is nowhere left to run, and so, perhaps for the first time, you are simply here. Everything you were chasing turns out to have been a way of not being where you were.

You do not have to wait for that day. What it forces on a person can be seen on any ordinary Tuesday. Your essence is not in becoming. It is in being. Being is what you already are while the becoming goes on, the way the sky is already there while the weather passes through it. You cannot improve it and you cannot lose it. You can only forget it, and you forget it for exactly as long as you are trying to become something else.

This is not an argument against changing your life. Learn the language, leave the job, get well. But notice the difference between doing a thing and needing it to make you someone. The first is light. The second has a hook in it, and the hook is the belief that you are not yet enough to be here. That belief is the whole engine of the loop. Look at it directly and it has very little to stand on. You were enough to be here before you did anything, because being here was never a reward.

So forgive yourself for constantly trying to become something. Not because the trying was a sin, but because it was a misunderstanding, and misunderstandings are what forgiveness is for. Set the loop down for one breath and see what is left. What is left is you, already whole, already here, asking nothing.

Questions that arise

Why do I never feel like I have arrived?

Because arriving is not something becoming can deliver. Each goal reached becomes the ground for the next one. The sense of having arrived belongs to being, not to achievement, and being is available now.

Is it wrong to want to improve myself?

No. Wanting to learn, heal or grow is natural. The trouble begins when the improvement carries the belief that you are not yet enough to be here. Drop that belief and the same efforts become lighter.

What is the difference between being and becoming?

Becoming happens in time and in the outer world: what you do, have and are seen as. Being is what you already are while all of that goes on. Becoming changes constantly. Being does not change at all.

How do I step out of the loop?

Not by becoming someone who has stepped out of it. Notice the loop when it is running, and notice that you are the one noticing. That noticing is already outside the loop.

Where this came from

This essay grew out of one line in my book I Forgive You. The book is a long letter, written to you, and again and again it stops to forgive you for something. This one reads: I forgive you for constantly trying to become something. The letter tells you who is writing it only on the last page, and I will not give that away here.

I Forgive You runs about 115 pages and costs €9. The rest of my books are at jussiniittyviita.com.