Advanced Reading: I Am Me!

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I want you to spend time thinking about yourself and how important you are. You all are a very special part of my daily life at McCombs, but I don't think you take enough time to realize just how truly special each of you are. Today is all about you, not others. What is it that you love about yourself? What makes you unique and different than everyone else? What makes you an important part of our community? What is it that you have to offer to others?

Read the poem below and respond to it however you choose. Your response can be a poem about yourself, responses to the questions above, or any other sort of response that comes to your mind related to "you being you!" Get creative!

I Am Me
I am me.
In all the world, there is no one exactly like me.
There are people who have some parts like me,
but no one adds up exactly like me.

Therefore, everything that comes out of me
is authentically mine because I alone choose it.
I own everything about me
my body, including everything it does;
my mind, including all its thoughts and ideas;
my eyes, including the images of all they behold;
my feelings, whatever they may be...
anger,
joy,
frustration,
love,
disappointment,
excitement
my mouth, and all the words that come out of it
polite,
sweet or rough,
correct or incorrect;
my voice, loud or soft.
And all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own all my triumphs and successes,
all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By doing so I can love me and be friendly with me in all parts.
I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know.
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully, look for solutions to the puzzles
and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think
and feel at a given moment in time is me.
This is authentic and represents where I am in that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I
thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting.
I can discard that which is unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting,
And invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do.
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive,
and to make sense and order out of the world of people
and things outside of me.
I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.