There is a certain fad today for creating better versions of ourself, popular in a lot of the self-help books.   The danger with this is that it sometimes only increases our dissatisfaction with who we actually are, and the sometimes, less exciting place, our lives are. Sometimes these versions of ourselves and the ideal how-we-would like-to-be can come from books or other peoples’ thoughts and take us away from the person we actually are. Instead of always moving on,  our practice can ask us at times to stay with what we have. It is there that we work out the unique person we are meant to be.

Rabbi Zusya’s words,  a short while before his death : “In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘Why where you not Moses?’ I shall be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’