“Be yourself.”
This courageous clarion call invites us to strip away layers that obscure our true nature and to uncover who we really are. It urges us to discover the self that lies at our core.
What exactly does it mean to be yourself?
Is there a single, unchanging self that elusively waits for us to find it?
Not necessarily. Each of us changes throughout life. Your self is not stationary. The twists and turns of our lives are constantly reshaping who we are and how we see ourselves. Self-discovery is about recognizing who we have become at this moment in time, rather than finding something, or someone, that is fixed.
Chazal explain that life’s experiences and stages reshape both the heart and the mind. They are continually transforming how a person understands himself and the world around him. The Radak (Melachim I, 11:41) quotes that the Sages taught that Shlomo Hamelech composed three sacred works at different stages of his life. As a young man, he wrote Shir HaShirim, a poetic expression of pure, idealized love between Hashem and the Jewish people. In middle age, he composed Mishlei, a collection of wise and balanced parables, reflecting a more seasoned view of life. In old age, he penned Koheles, a somber reflection on human limitation and the fleeting nature of worldly pursuits.
Why did the Sages associate each of these writings with a particular period in Shlomo Hamelech’s life? Was the wisest of all men unable to transcend his own age?
It seems that Chazal are describing that even Shlomo Hamelech, with his unparalleled wisdom, could not have written Koheles without first enduring the hard-won disillusionments of age. He could not have expressed the innocent passion of Shir HaShirim without the freshness of youth. His wisdom, while vast, was inseparable from the person he was at each point along his journey.
This insight becomes even more striking when we recall that Shlomo Hamelech composed with Divine inspiration. The Divine did not erase his humanity; it amplified it. Ruach hakodesh did not bypass his experience; it gave voice to it.
This illuminates something profound about the human condition. There is no single, static self waiting to be discovered. Instead, we have different selves that emerge as we live, grow, and change. Who we are today is not who we were yesterday, and who we will become depends on our experiences, including the ones still ahead of us.
The concept of encountering multiples selves throughout life was beautifully expressed by Salvador Minuchin, a pioneer in psychotherapy. Minuchin reflected on his long life and career at age 95, shortly before he passed away. He traced how his own shifting identities shaped both his personal journey and his therapeutic approach.
He wrote:
“I grew up in a Jewish family in a small town in Argentina that was a kind of shtetl where, up until the age of 12, I didn’t know anybody who wasn’t Jewish. Then at 18, I went to medical school, and my world grew larger. At 20, I was put in jail for three months with a group of other students for protesting against [Argentinian President Juan] Perón, and my concept of myself changed again: I became an Argentinian Jew who was committed to social justice. From then on, I was a revolutionary and a fighter for social justice, and it seemed natural that I should join the Israeli army, in which I served as a doctor during the War for Independence. Later, when I emigrated to the United States and was on the staff at Wiltwyck School, I was a cultural outsider and found myself identifying with poor black people as I learned to speak English. And as I came to feel that I belonged with the staff and children and families at Wiltwyck, I felt I expanded.”
Minuchin continues by describing how this openness to transformation became central to his therapy:
“My idea that we’re all multiple selves led me to develop a therapy of challenge, rather than one of being gentle with people. My goal as a therapist wasn’t to be cautious and empathic, but to be an intervenor who creates uncertainty in clients about who they were and are and what they’re capable of becoming. I wasn’t interested in their ‘true self.’ I wanted them to experience a series of selves and the expansion of possibility that can grow from that experience… At 95, I think of myself as having journeyed through life as many different people, and I think of a line from Antonio Machado, one of my favorite Spanish poets: “The road is not the road; you make the road by walking.” I hope in my own walking I’ve cleared away some debris for those who will follow.
Minuchin’s reflection captures a rare kind of courage. He is describing his willingness to let his experiences reshape the self, to embrace both change and uncertainty, and to allow growth to redefine his identity rather than threaten it.
Fascinatingly, Minuchin did not plan some of the situations that brought out his many selves. Some were chosen, but others were thrust upon him, yet each of them shaped him in ways he could not have anticipated. In retrospect, those experiences, both the ones he embraced and the ones that challenged him, helped him discover new dimensions of himself.
In addition, Minuchin’s life story reframes failure. We tend to dread setbacks, seeing them as detours or derailments. Yet for Minuchin, certain moments that could easily have been viewed as extreme failures, like his time in jail, became turning points that revealed new parts of who he was. What he endured did not diminish him. Instead, it expanded him.
Often we find ourselves thrust onto the road by life’s twists and turns, carried forward by circumstances we might have preferred to avoid. These experiences shape us and sometimes reveal parts of ourselves that had been hidden or overlooked. We tend to dread failure, yet those very moments can become the crucibles that press us to create, to adapt, and to express new dimensions of who we are. What feels like failure at first may, in time, prove to be one of our greatest successes.
The poem which Minuchin is referring to succinctly sings of life’s shifts and their impact on us.
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, the road is not the road; you make the road by walking.
You make your own road by walking,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Our self is not something to be unearthed once and for all, but something we build as we live, step by step, and moment by moment. Our life story keeps on unfolding and is molded and reworked by our age, stage, and voyage.
You might be surprised by the many selves you become as “you make your own road by walking.”
Rabbi Shmuel Maybruch's Blog 