Words that speak to me



“Life isn’t about finding yourself.  Life is about creating yourself.”
By: George Bernard Shaw

            I chose this quote because I believe none of us truly know who we are when we enter the world and we have to go through phases of life; some good and some bad but I think that’s where you learn yourself the most and start to define yourself by who you are and what you represent.  In the quote it looks like the author is trying to show the difference between “finding” and “creating” or he’s trying to point out that these two words don’t mean the same thing.  This quote makes a lot of sense to me because if you go through life trying to find yourself then that means on some level you already know who you are and I believe we change everyday and that shape’s us into creating our self.
            Very few of us take active part in creating ourselves.  We often let outside forces like our peers, our family, and other things affect us instead of taking advantage of the control we have over who we are, and shaping ourselves into the kind of person we want to be.  When we were younger we would try to “define” or “identify” ourselves through our friends or try to create ourselves into what our parents want us to be.  So during that whole time we are torn between trying to identify and be like our peers and trying to create ourselves into what our parents or family think is best for us.  So during this whole time we are unable to create ourselves as individuals.  A lot of us say we are still finding ourselves, even though no one actually knows how the process of finding one’s self work and I believe on some level some of us are scared of what we might find.
            I like how the author just puts the quote in simple terms and that it’s easy to generalize your own opinion on what it means to you.  The author uses the rhetorical term anaphora in his quote because he repeats “life” in the beginning of both sentences to show that this particular quote is referring to just life in general and that this is the main topic to focus on.  The author also uses the rhetorical term epistrophe in this quote because he repeats “yourself” at the end of both sentences to show how this quote is kind of a self reflection about you and on the difference between finding and creating yourself.  He basically wants to capture the reader’s attention and put the focus back on the reader so they can think to themselves who am I?
Overall, this quote really caught my attention because I actually believed that life was all about finding yourself until I read this quote it really made me think further into what it was saying.  I believe this quote says a lot without actually having to because a lot of us go through the day to day stress of trying to find out who we are without knowing that we are actually creating ourselves at that very moment.

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