You Are a Walking Encyclopedia

Have you ever thought of yourself as a walking encyclopedia? Why not? After all, your mind, your emotions, your body, and your soul, have an unimaginable number of pieces of information stored inside you. Words, ideas, charts, pictures, experiences, and much more. All part of a book written by you and God.

The most exciting part of this reality is all that information is uniquely yours. There is no encyclopedia set exactly like you, even if you are an identical twin. Even if it is a piece of information shared by others, your experiences, your education, your family influences shine a different light on it.

Some walking encyclopedias have lots of text and pictures. Some are small, children, teens, and young adults. Others are huge, people in their 80's, 90's and beyond. Some lived what you might call unexciting lives. Others lived life to the max.

To paraphrase a credit card commercial, What's in your Encyclopedia?

Why Is Knowing this Important?

What are the implications for you, as a walking encyclopedia.

First, being a walking encyclopedia makes interaction with others, and even with yourself at times, very interesting. It also makes communication challenging at times.

Second, knowing you are a walking encyclopedia, you know you can learn from others. Why? Because they are also encyclopedias. Meeting others for the first time is like walking into a library and opening a book you've never read before.

Third, everyone you meet can learn from you. True, much inside you is unavailable for others to learn. But in many ways, the way you talk and act makes you an open book.

Fourth, as a walking encyclopedia, when you take time to look back at your past and recall all the in's and out's of your life, you can learn much about yourself, including lessons that will help you going forward in your life.

Finally, because you are a walking encyclopedia, you are a repository of everything that's been deposited in you heart, mind, body, and soul---good and bad.

What's In Your Encyclopedia

Imagine yourself walking into a library, pulling you (your encyclopedia) from a shelf, and sitting down to learn about who you are and what's been consciously or unconsciously placed on the pages of your life.

What words would you read? What pictures would you see? What emotions would you experience? What experiences would make you proud, or better yet, thankful before an Almighty God, the ultimate author of your encyclopedia?

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb." (Psalm 139:13)

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10)

“The truth of what you've been through is only part of the story, keep writing the chapters your older self will enjoy reading.” Leonie H. Mattison