You Choose Who You Are

While I was still playing Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly, I stumbled on a Druid spell called Reincarnation, which can bring a character back from the dead. It's cheaper than the standard Resurrection spell that you can have a cleric cast to bring your character back to life, but Reincarnation has a catch: When your character awakens, they'll have taken a new, randomly-selected, humanoid form, meaning that your character probably won't be human anymore.

This "drawback" is actually something that appealed to me. I decided that if my character died, I'd want to have him reincarnated as an orc or a goblin - some race totally unsuited to being a Paladin - just to make it more interesting (and more heroic) when he goes on being a Paladin anyway.

In life, there are a lot of circumstances that we can't do much about. We can't choose our race, gender, or family. We have only a limited amount of control over where we work, who we work with, and how much money we have. We can't choose what our natural talents and weaknesses are, though through a great deal of effort, we can develop new talents and overcome old weaknesses, if we really want to.

Though our circumstances may not be completely in line with the kinds of lives we want to lead, we can still choose what kinds of people we'll be. We can't choose many of our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to our circumstances. We can't choose much about the outer part of who we are, but we can make almost every decision about the inner part of who we are. Just as my character could have chosen whether to remain a Paladin or to adapt to his new form, we can all choose whether we adapt to our circumstances or whether we stick to our own course, despite the hardships. While there's much to be said for adaptability, we should ultimately make our own choices and not let our circumstances define us.

You may not be the way you want to be right now, and there may or may not be a few things you can do about that, but even if you can't decide anything else about your life, you can decide the content and character of your heart. I can't ride a horse, wear armor, or learn to use divine magic (other than the real kind of divine magic), but I can still be a Paladin in my heart. I can still be bold and courageous. I can still be virtuous and good. I can choose to see and carry myself as a Paladin, even though I look just like a regular college student to everyone else. And importantly, the outside doesn't matter, but the inside does, "for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." - 1 Samuel 16:7