On reinventing yourself

There’s a lot of talk in personal-development land about “reinventing yourself”. But here’s what struck me the other day…

You can’t reinvent yourself because you never invented yourself to begin with.

The problem is, through living life and bumping up against the world, layer upon layer of defense mechanisms, biases, assumptions, limitations, etc. have been piled onto that divinely created invention/idea. All of that stuff has to break and crumble away. 

This is what life seems to do: through the days (with help from the ego) it piles layers of nonsense on. And then it brings you to an impossible point where it all has to break away. 

I guess the gist is this…

You are invented. 
You are not your own idea. 
You are God’s idea.

By trying to reinvent yourself, it seems that all you can do is invent an inferior version of your already-invented self. 

Or, another option is…

Enjoy the pure gift of your already-invented self.

It seems that the more we try to invent or reinvent ourselves, the more our ego piles on layers of crap onto an already-perfect design (maybe not “perfect” in the way our ego sees it, but perfect in the divine sense). 

Perhaps the point shouldn’t be to add but to take away. To surrender it all to God. Whatever’s left is what can’t be removed. 

At a certain level, this might make sense.