The List

There was a piece of paper taped to my bathroom mirror. A list. A question.

"Who do you wish to be?"

I had written it in a moment of conviction, believing that if I could see the words every day, they would shape me. That repetition would become reality. That I could build myself into someone I could admire. Someone I could trust. Someone worthy.

Every morning, I read the list. Every night, I measured myself against it. Some days, I felt close. Others, impossibly far. And over time, the words began to blur—not from fading ink, but from my own doubt.

Had I written down the truth of myself? Or had I crafted an image, an ideal, a man I thought would be easier to love?

The distance between who I was and who I had hoped to be stretched wider. I began to resent the list, its quiet judgment. I avoided the mirror. I considered tearing the paper down but hesitated—because if I removed it, wouldn’t I be giving up? Wouldn’t I be admitting that I was never going to become that man?

Hope is an elegant drug.

I did change. Not in the way I had planned, not by following some written map, but by living. The man in the mirror was not the man on the paper, no. He was something else—less polished, less certain, but real.

And maybe that was the point. Maybe we do not become who we write down. Maybe we become who we choose, moment by moment, breath by breath. A series of imperceptible shifts.

In the end, a list is just a piece of paper. Words taped to a mirror. Nothing more.