When we set our hands to work on a project, a relationship, a craft, even on our own habits, we imagine that we are the ones doing the shaping.

We press, we cut, we mold. We bend things toward our vision, toward what we think they should become.

Unwittingly, the process shapes us too.

The carpenter may think he is shaping wood, but notice how patience begins to shape him. The parent may think she is shaping her child, but watch how compassion reshapes her. The entrepreneur may think he is shaping a business, but resilience slowly chisels him.

Every act of shaping is also self-reshaping.

It leaves fingerprints not only on the creation but also on the creator.

So the real question is never just what am I shaping? It is also what is this shaping making of me?

Because what we shape also shapes us.

– Osasu Oviawe