'Becoming Myself'

'A nineteen-year old assistant from a L’Arche community came to see me. I asked him how he was getting on. He told me he was doing all right, but that it was hard. I asked him to tell me something good that was happening. He said, "I am becoming myself." Through all the stages of growth, is not the real aim in life to become ourselves, to allow the barriers to come down so that the deepest 'I' can emerge? Not to become what others want us to be. Not to refuse life, or to try to be someone else, but to grow from the seed of life with in each of us, rooted in our earth and history.'

- Jean Vanier, Our Journey Home, p. 167