What Defines Who You Are?

What do you care about?  How do you spend your free time?  What defines or describes you as a person?  When you have no obligations tugging at you, what do you do?  If you ask my granddaughter what I like she will reply “books and music”.  There is no doubt that I love to spend much of my free time reading books and listening to music.  I am also a solitary person so I enjoy and need my time alone.  Throw in a good cup of coffee and I’m very content.  If you walked into my “Fortress of Solitude” you would see a lot of books, CD’s, movies, and probably a coffee cup on my table.  This might sound boring to some of you who are more action oriented types but I accept that I am probably a boring person to many people.  However, I am never boring to myself.  I am happy to be left alone and allowed to simply be.  I get it that many of you are the total opposite of me.  I’m OK with that.  You are who you are.  I suspect that there are a lot of people who simply don’t think much about who they are and maybe not much about what they value.  If you could have the rest of this day off, and you had no pressing demands or chores that simply had to be done, what would you do for the rest of the day?  I admit that along with the things I have already mentioned I might take a nap.  It’s what old men do.  How would you spend the time today?  Would you choose a quiet day at home, relaxing and doing something you enjoy?  Would you spend the day at the mall buying more stuff that you don’t need?  Would you go volunteer at your church?  Would you take a walk in the park or go work out?  Sometime today think about what you value and how you would spend your time if you truly owned your time and you had the freedom to decide how it was used.  What is it in your life that tells other people who you are?  I think people who know me well think of me as a spiritual hippie and a thinker, someone who is a free spirit and who really doesn’t care if he’s on the same page as other people.  I hope I am seen as someone who is a lover of music and intellectual pursuits and as someone who values a spirituality that explores a deeper vision of life beyond the common, ordinary, and mundane.  I could be wrong.  Many people might just see me as a weird person.  I can live with that.