This reflection grows out of an episode of The Sacred Resonance Podcast, where I explored becoming, the pressure of self-improvement, and what it means to honor where we are while remaining open to who we may yet become.
I have been thinking about becoming—not simply as a destination, but as one of the conditions of being alive. We use the word easily enough. We talk about who we are becoming, the communities we are becoming, the lives we hope to create. Often the word appears when we are somewhere in between: no longer able to describe ourselves entirely by what has been, but not yet able to name what is emerging. We sometimes call this a liminal space, a threshold between one thing and another. Yet the more I sit with becoming, the less I want to make it synonymous with uncertainty. There are times when we really do arrive somewhere. There are stages we complete, identities we inhabit, accomplishments we reach, and ways of being that become settled enough to call home.
My doctoral work offers an obvious example. A PhD has recognizable stages: coursework, qualifying examinations, the dissertation. Completing coursework is an arrival. It is not the arrival, but it is still real. One stage ends and another begins. The existence of what comes next does not diminish what has already been completed. Life often unfolds in similar ways. We cross thresholds. We finish things. We grow into responsibilities, relationships, convictions, and identities that may hold us for months, years, or decades. Becoming does not mean that nothing is ever complete. We arrive all the time. We just do not arrive once and for all.
Perhaps this is one reason journey language appears so naturally in our spiritual and religious traditions. We speak of pilgrimage, formation, transformation, liberation, awakening, sanctification, practice, the path. These words are not interchangeable, and the traditions that use them do not all mean the same thing. Still, many of them share an intuition that human life involves movement. Even outside religious language, we speak about seasons, chapters, developmental stages, transitions, growth, learning, and change. We seem to know, almost instinctively, that who we are now can be fully real without being the totality of who we will ever be.
There is something theological in that for me because it allows unfinishedness to be understood without treating it as defect. To say that I am still becoming is not necessarily to confess that there is something wrong with me. It may simply be to acknowledge that I am alive. My understanding can deepen. My relationships can change. My body will change. My understanding of the Sacred can expand. There are things I may know ten years from now that I cannot know today because I have not yet lived the life that will teach them to me. There are things I may outgrow and other things I may return to with new eyes. Some things I assume are permanent may prove temporary, while something I barely notice now may become part of me for the rest of my life. None of that necessarily means I have failed. It means I have lived.
That distinction matters in a culture that has learned how to turn becoming into an industry. We are surrounded by invitations to become more productive, more disciplined, more healed, more attractive, more successful, more efficient, more organized, more spiritual, more optimized. None of these desires is automatically bad. Growth can be necessary. There are habits we need to change, wounds that deserve attention, skills we need to develop, and ways of being that no longer serve us or the people around us. I have things I want to change about my own life. The problem is not growth. The problem begins when growth becomes a permanent indictment of the person we already are.
There is an entire economy capable of profiting from our dissatisfaction with ourselves. It tells us that somewhere ahead is a version of us who will finally deserve what we hesitate to give ourselves now: respect, rest, tenderness, celebration, perhaps even love. Finish this degree. Reach this weight. Earn this amount. Heal this wound. Accomplish this goal. Become your “best self.” Then perhaps you can relax into your own life.
The dangerous thing is not growth. It is when your future starts shaming your present.
I know that logic because it can sound remarkably reasonable. I will be enough when I finish this. I will feel secure when I accomplish that. I will respect myself when I become the person I think I ought to be. The language may sound motivating, but underneath it is a troubling assumption: the person I am now is a problem that the person I become later will finally solve.
I do not want to give the future that kind of power.
At the same time, rejecting the endless project of self-optimization does not require us to stop imagining a future. Sometimes the ability to see ourselves somewhere we have not yet reached is itself a kind of grace. I use that word intentionally, though there are other words for it: orientation, clarity, direction, horizon, compass. Whenever we can find language or an image for where we hope to go, we are given something by which to orient our movement. We may imagine the work we want to do, a relationship we hope to nurture, a degree we intend to finish, a community we want to build, or a spiritual life we want to inhabit more deeply. The vision does not have to provide an entire map. Sometimes it simply allows us to say, I think I am headed that way.
There have been seasons of my life when I could not say that. The future was difficult to imagine, and the next direction was not obvious. There have been other seasons when something ahead became visible enough to guide me. Not completely. Not with every detail settled. But enough. That kind of vision can be a gift because it gives movement some orientation without demanding certainty about the destination.
The challenge is learning how to hold that horizon without allowing it to become a judgment against where we stand. We can desire something more without declaring the present worthless. We can imagine who we may become without despising who we are. We can know that another threshold will eventually come without rushing ourselves through the one we are crossing now. Sometimes the most truthful thing we can say is, I like who I am here. That does not mean I will remain unchanged. It means this version of me does not need to disappear before I am allowed to honor him.
Perhaps becoming asks us to develop the capacity to hold past, present, and future together: to honor who we have been, inhabit who we are, and remain available to who we may yet become. None of those requires the rejection of the others. The person I once was carried me here. The person I am now is not merely scaffolding for someone more impressive later. And the person I may become does not yet have enough information to judge the life I am living today.
So I find myself asking different questions. Where am I actually standing right now? What have I already completed that I have been too busy to recognize as an arrival? What can I see on the horizon, and can I allow it to orient me without letting it accuse me? And what might already be forming in me before I have the language to name it?
We do not have to name everything prematurely. We do not have to turn every transition into a lesson before we have finished living it. Sometimes it is enough to recognize that something is moving.
Perhaps becoming is not the pursuit of a final, perfected version of ourselves. Perhaps it is learning to recognize the sacredness of each arrival while remaining open to whatever life may still be forming in us.
We arrive all the time. We just do not arrive once and for all.
This essay is adapted from “What Does It Mean to Become?,” an episode of The Sacred Resonance Podcast. You can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. New episodes are released on Wednesdays.