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any people make the mistake of running around asking their friends and acquaintances, some they barely know, "What is the meaning of life? What should I be doing with my life? Who they are in their life?" This approach will add even more confusion and frustration to one's journey, but it is a common approach. Who really knows you well enough to give you qualified answers to these questions? It similar to setting up a focus group of friends without any idea of the material facts around which you want confirmation much less insights. If you use this methodology, I would at least suggest that you come up with some definition of who you think you are and what you think you are called to do with your life, before beginning the conversation. Come with some thesis about yourself that you are seeking to confirm.
The great theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo said, "Coming to know one self is an inside, not and outside job. To quote him, "Late have I loved you... you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you; they had no existence at all" (Augustine, Confessions).
His point is, we are all tempted to look everywhere in the world for the answer to self-worth, meaning, fulfillment, and joy, but in truth, the answer is inside the reality of our gift and talents.
Augustine went on to say, "No one knows what he himself is made of, except his own spirit within him, yet there is still some part of him which remains hidden even from his own spirit; but you, Lord, know everything about a human being because you have made him...Let me, then confess what I know about myself, and confess too what I do not know, because what I know of myself I know only because you shed light on me, and what I do not know I shall remain ignorant about until my darkness becomes like bright noon before your face" (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions)
You do not discover yourself, your gift and purpose, in the things of this world that you acquire. Self is about whom you are; not what you have. However, many people equate their reality by telling everyone what they have acquired. It is easy to see why this happens when reality television is based on the false concept of; having makes our being.
