Maybe Trying Is Becoming
I've always found the idea of “becoming” strange. We speak about it as though there is a finished version of ourselves somewhere ahead, waiting for us to arrive. As though I am here, and the person I am supposed to become is somewhere over there, and all I have to do is keep moving until the distance disappears.
Maybe that's why trying feels so temporary.
You say you're trying to become a writer, trying to figure out your life, trying to make something of yourself. The word itself almost sounds like an apology. I'm only trying. As if trying means you haven't become anything yet.
But I've started wondering if that's the wrong way to see it.
What if trying is not the stage before becoming? What if trying is one of the ways we become?
Because when you try something, you don't remain exactly who you were before you tried it. Even when nothing works out the way you imagined, you leave with something. A different understanding. A new frustration. A little more courage. A new question. Sometimes even a new version of yourself that you didn't know existed.
And I think that's what makes becoming difficult to notice.
We're always looking for the obvious evidence. The result. The achievement. The thing that finally allows us to point at ourselves and say, There. Now I am that person.
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But what about everything that happened before that moment?
What about the person who kept writing before anyone called them a writer? The person who kept learning while still feeling behind? The person who kept starting things without knowing whether they would become anything?
Maybe those attempts weren't evidence that they hadn't become yet.
Maybe they were the becoming.
I've spent time thinking I was simply trying to get somewhere, without realizing that the journey was quietly changing what I wanted, what I understood, and even how I saw myself. Perhaps some of the things I call “trying” are actually pieces of an identity I haven't learned to recognize yet.
Maybe that's why we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our unfinished selves.
We keep waiting to become, while becoming is already happening.
Maybe trying isn't proof that you haven't arrived.
Maybe it is proof that you're already on your way to someone you haven't met yet.
