This quote, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, is currently hanging above my sink to look at whenever the dishes are piled too high. Whether it was actually said by the 16th president or not, nobody knows, but as in some things (but certainly not all), the author of the statement matters less than its meaning.
If the statement had said “whoever,” it wouldn’t be as remarkably unique. Instead, it starts with the word “whatever.” “Whatever is a word that has been infamously used by teenagers to annoy adults, usually parents and sometimes teachers. But when applied to a person, it becomes intriguing and somewhat confounding.
“Who” I am can be answered in facts like my name, my date of birth, my marital status. “What” I am is harder to answer. For the first five years of my life, I was something then for the next five or so, I was something else. Each year since then, I’ve been trying to become something more like me. But the trouble is… I didn’t know exactly what “me” was.
As I enter into my twenties, I think I know more about what “me” is:
1.a daughter
2.a sister
3.a roommate
4.a writer
5. a thinker
But aren’t these things facts as well? I am a daughter. I am a sister to my older siblings. I am all those other things. But facts are solid and don’t generally change. The words I have come up with to describe myself are always changing.
The daughter and sister that I was when I was six is dramatically different, I hope, than the daughter and sister I am. And since my roommate situation has changed over the semesters, I have changed as a roommate. I have always been a thinker, but it hasn’t been until the last few years that I’ve considered myself a writer.
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
The quote charges us to be a good one of whatever we are. So… I should not only strive to be a writer, I should be the best I can be. That may not necessarily mean that my products will be good or that they will touch people as long or profoundly as Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, or Emily Dickinson, but will be good enough. Of course that extends to every other “what” that I am.
My aim is to be a good daughter, sister, roommate, and eventually wife and mother. But then there’s the question of what “good” is.
I think I’ll leave that for another rainy, snowy, or otherwise lazy day.