I was finished trying to live up to an image of who I wanted to be or who I thought I was. It is all too easy for any of us to get lost in such manufactured images. Often, the perceptions and expectations of those around us strengthen the weighty images of ourselves we already carry around. Habitually, we label ourselves and others, and before long these labels create a false sense of identity that we spend far too much of our energy trying to justify. Sometimes we habitually identify ourselves with our jobs, our possessions, our goals; other times we habitually identify ourselves with our
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