I am who i am I received a phone call from my younger brother the other night. He is 18 years old and a typical teen. We were having a chat and suddenly he blew me with a question that I think we’ve all wondered about in our lives, “Why can’t I be like the other kids, they are so cool and have everything. I am so different.”

How often do we wish we could be like the Joneses? Drive the brand new car and live in a mansion. How often do we pretend to be someone we are not? We get ourselves into financial debt to keep up with the latest and the greatest trends going around. We hang out at parties to be cool. Some go as far as to use drugs because their friends are doing it.

I remember when I was in my teens I went through exactly the same situations. I was amongst the popular group because I played hockey for the first team and my friends were cool. So I was regarded as being cool, but deep down I knew that this was not who I really was. I was unhappy with myself and the person I turned out to be, but I lived the life because I thought people liked me and I was popular.

Deep down inside I was lonely and miserable. I used to always fight with my family and the people I loved the most. All because they really knew me and they were not happy with the person I wanted to be. It was only when I started teaching and I was away from those “friends” of mine that I started realising there is more to life. The final breakthrough came when my Deputy Headmaster called me to his office one day to have a chat. His words made a lot of sense “Mad’s don’t try and be like the other teachers, be the teacher you are inside, be yourself and no one else, be the teacher I see locked inside”. I left his office that day with a new perception. Why do I want people to like me, more than I like myself, and I changed? I started to live my own life, and suddenly things started making a lot more sense and for the first time I was happy. I did not fight with my family anymore. People seem to talk to me a lot more and the kids I was teaching just started to listen so much better. I met the perfect man and all because I started to be who I really am.

God created each of us as unique in our own right. I know not all of us are models or handsome. But in each of us is a person like no one else. That makes it so great. People often remember the things you do, not the way you look. I know in Hollywood it is extremely important to look your best and be who you are not, and you get paid a lot for it, but honestly do you really want that type of life. Where you have no privacy, where every time you make a mistake they open it up to the world to see. Are you happy with the person you see once you take all the makeup off. A very famous and wealthy man once said. ” I don’t care that people don’t like me, business is business” and if you think about it, it is very true if he had to worry about what other people think he probably would not have been where he is today. When you look into a mirror are you happy with the person looking back at you?

To be who God created you to be is the best gift you can give yourself today. Be honest with yourself.

“I am what i am. I am my own special creation. It’s my world that I want to have a little pride in.”