"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

This is a quote by Oscar Wilde. It is only fair to give him credit for he was the one who came up with it.

I've recently been confronted with some people who have more or less been copying what Katie and I have spent seven months building and pouring our heart into. It's quite unnerving. At the same time it's a great reminder to me that we all start somewhere and need to start with something. I'm also reminded about how I have given thanks, how appropriate on the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, to those who helped me or whose material I used. It's kind of like the difference between plagarism and paraphrasing, just in the spectrum of life rather than literary work.

"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

It's such a powerful quote for me because it really brings home the fact that I can only be who I am. Even in times of chaos when I've been grasping to find something I can take hold of and run with; I remembered this. When I was confused about who I was, where I belonged and what I had to give; I remembered this.

My Dad passed along some words to me when I was in University. My Grandma used to tell him, "You can be anything you want to be." I expanded it to, "You can be whoever you want to be and do whatever you want to do."

And so I began to ask myself who I really wanted to be! It took years before that answer revealed itself to me...5 to be exact and in that period of 5 years I tried on many hats and none seemed to fit. Well there were a few hats that fit for a little while. I tried on my last hat just over a year ago when I started blogging. That hat fit like a glove...or a hat... :) However, I didn't realize that at the time. I sort of had to grow into it if you will. Blogging allowed me to be myself. It was original, unique and me because I was writing! I was oblivious to what a blog even was when I first started mine.

One thing I was very clear about when I started my blog, was that if I used anyone elses material I would give them props. It's out of integrity to use someone else's material or ideas and pass it off as my own. Maybe it was the fear of being caught plagarising growing up, or maybe it's one of my core values...acknowlege people for their work if I'm using it to add to my own. I'm getting off track here.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across is very simply seen in my eyes. "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." Or for me today as I'm struggling with the thought of others trying to be me or my sister...Be yourself, I'm already taken, we're already taken... My lesson in all of this is to just sit with it and trust that my uniqueness cannot be duplicated as it is uniquely mine energetically, physically, mentally, spiritually. Knowing that is more confirmation than I need!