But lately I've been thinking about another Disney movie that we love, which is Moana. We saw it in the theaters when it first came out and we loved it, but there has always been one line in the movie that really bugged me. In the song "Where you are" when Moana is trying to decide what to do, her grandmother sings this line:
"You are your father's daughter
stubbornness and pride
mind what he says but remember
you may hear a voice inside
and if the voice starts to whisper
to follow the farthest star
Moana, that voice inside is who you are."
This idea always bugged me, but I could never quite put it to words. I could never quite define exactly why. But as things have been unfolding with the coronavirus and the quarantines, things have kind of clicked into place and I've finally been able to solidify this idea of what it was about that line that bothered me.
And it all comes down to this idea that what we do is who we are.
I grew up in an athletic family and we were playing sports year-round. I played just about everything. Soccer, softball, basketball, track, cross country, even football during recess or with my family. I was very competitive and I felt like sports defined me. Later I found volleyball and I loved it. I wanted to play forever. I was too short to play in college but I was determined to somehow get around that because I loved playing. That's who I was.
As I got older, I was introduced to dance. I started taking dance classes and then I eventually started teaching classes and dance became a huge part of my life. I felt drawn to all kinds of dance and it felt so natural, like a part of who I was. I couldn't imagine my life without dancing. And it felt like that was who I was.
As I went on my mission and then off to college, the chances for either of those things was more and more limited. At first, I would play on co-ed volleyball teams and go dancing with friends on the weekends. Then I was working two jobs and trying to pass my classes and my time for that shrunk considerably.
Then I got married and had my first kid. Having children consumed my life in ways that I had never imagined, and volleyball and dance and everything else suddenly took second place to this little life we had brought into the world. But that was okay, but I had a new purpose. Motherhood came to define my life.
And while all of those things are important to me, and are things that I enjoy, I've come to realize that who I am is so much more than any one of those things.
And while all of those things are important to me, and are things that I enjoy, I've come to realize that who I am is so much more than any one of those things.
And that is exactly the problem. We spend our lives defining our happiness, defining who we are, based on things that don't last.
We may love a sport, a dance, any physical activity; but some day our bodies will give out or the demands of adult life will take over
We may love our children, and we will ALWAYS be mothers; but some day those same children will grow up and start families of their own and they will no longer define our day to day actions.
Sometimes we lose the most important people in our life, and we struggle to figure out who we are without them.
We seem to spend on our lives deciding who we are based on our life circumstances; based on what we do or who we love; and no matter how much we wish it wasn't true, those things can change.
And that's something that we are starting to see with the effects of this quarantine. Suddenly, people are losing jobs, losing hobbies, losing options. Some are even losing loved ones. While some of us are happily binge watching Netflix, there are others who are really struggling to find balance in a constantly changing world.
So, the real question is: Who are you?
If you take away the house, the car, the phone and the television. Take away the memes and the endless streaming, and the music. Take away the things we DO. And who are we without it?
I don't know if we'll ever have an opportunity quite like this again. A time when the chaos of the world forces you to stay home, to take a look around, and (if we're doing this right), to re-evaluate. To focus on what really matters. And hopefully, to take the time to redefine what makes us who we are.
Panic has made good Christian people into self-serving hoarders.
A virus has made us choose between protecting those at risk and our own convenience. And far too often convenience is winning out
So many of even the most well-intentioned parents are losing their minds, not because they don't love their children, but because of everything they feel like they have to DO to make up for what they feel their kids are missing out on.
What you DO does not define WHO YOU ARE!
And neither does your failures or even your successes.
But what you do in times of crisis like these, does reflect who you are on the inside.
I think it's time to really take a look at who we are. At what defines us. At what really matters to us. To look at who we want to be in the future and what we have to change to get there. And then make sure that our actions line up with that.
Let who you are determine what you do, not the other way around.
