Is anyone ‘real’-ly out there?

Sitting in the Convention Centre in another city last week, while 300 excited high school grads, including my grandson, were celebrating their ‘rite of passage,’ I was struck by some of the words of the valedictorian who encouraged fellow classmates to ‘be unique’ and to ‘be yourselves’.

Very interesting little phrase, isn’t it, when you really think about it, to……‘be yourself’.

I have used it often. I love being around people who are gingerly testing the waters of ‘being themselves’….I mean for real, and not the meaning it has evolved into, like doing what you are comfortable with.

My thanks to e.e.cummings for this excerpt from a piece of his poetry…

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

I was encouraged to ‘be myself’ when I expressed an interest in writing, when I said I feared performing in public, when meeting new people and such situations where some kind of stress may be expected to be present.

That’s where the confusion begins, for ‘Who the heck is the ‘myself’ that I should be? How come it seems to be suggested as the answer for everything?’

Having just returned from spending days away from my computer, I had the thought flit through my mind, “Where would I be without my computer?” This was followed by another thought. “Who would I be without my computer?”

Then came the flood…..”Who am I ever, at any time, when exhorted to ‘just be yourself’? For example…

Is the person I see in the mirror really the ‘myself’ that I am always being? Yesterday?  Tomorrow?

Which ‘myself’ responds to my name when it is called? Is it one ‘myself’ or the person I think I need to be to respond to whomever calls?

Which ‘myself’ fills out my job resume?

Who interacts with my children and grandchildren as parents? Does the ‘myself’ change when it is suggested we need to be role models?

Who hurts when I am lonely or suffer a broken heart?

When I say ‘I love you’ is it a ‘being myself’ expression, or an ‘in order to…’ expression?

Who is present when I am introduced to new people, or more importantly, to a possible new mate?

Who is present as ‘myself’ when it isn’t necessary for me to impress folks (which seems like a lifetime trap)?

Who identifies the ‘myself’ for us when we sit in our churches?

Seeing those young, expectant, hopeful faces as they ponder their next steps in life, I am so aware – after almost 50 years in the workplace in various careers – that we don’t know how to speak our truth, or how to say our purpose……which fundamentally includes ‘being ourselves’.

We get it all confused with skills and selecting lucrative careers, the hopes of our parents and teachers, job and career counselors, expectations for success, and decide that if we discover the slot into which we fit, then that must be what it is to ‘be yourself’.

Have we altered the truth of ‘myself’ and made it into ‘the ‘comfortable myself’ or the ‘unstressed myself’? Seems so, doesn’t it?

When I think about myself and so many of my friends, it appears that we articulate our daily routines in such flowery tones that cover up clarity. Clarity about whether what has been using up our lives is really anything close to the real passion of ‘being yourself’.

I have heard it said that the gods build a code of life into our souls that we must then discover for ourselves. We must get behind any skills that we learn in order to experience this gift at its source.

How many of us are prepared to take that quest? Instead, we make savory what we’ve been doing with our lives because to do otherwise might be to negate a large part of everything, or we may have to leave the situation (that appears to have taken on a life of its own), or the mate (that we cannot remember how we chose), or the house (that has somehow become our master), or even the country (that is leeching away our years as we try to justify its real value in the bigger scheme of our life).

In exchange for moving this ‘code’ into the forefront of our lives, we convince ourselves and others that we have been right all along in our choices, and that we are happy with what we have surrendered our lives to. It is easier to hang onto the familiar than to start a whole new life from scratch….since that seems like the only option.

We are surrounded by those who support our lives as they are (heck, we put them there for that purpose!), or who conspire with our explanations for why life has gone the way it has…..(and who is to blame. Hint…not us!).

Having lived this way for some time, we may not notice it is the cause of the draining away of our vitality. It becomes much more difficult the next time we are encouraged to ‘be yourself’ since we are burdened by the sack of inauthenticity we are dragging behind us.

‘Being ourself’ has become like a muscle that has atrophied. Recovering its strength is not an easy task, especially since we feel that the appropriate exercise is ‘heading to the mall’!

Does this mean I am predicting a life of doom and gloom for my grandson and the other 300 fellow grads? Heck no! But it is a sobering thought for me to notice the pattern my generation has created as the model that will sweep away so many of life’s dreams for the young……without them being really aware that they are stepping onto a treadmill that is already running!

Maybe to ‘be myself’ would include having to say goodbye to what is around us, in order to embrace what sparks passion in our soul? If ‘being myself’ is about what I am comfortable with, or what I am good at, then it is no wonder I become lost. Something else is living my life for me.

To ‘be myself’ may be to plunge in and struggle with the shadow, the dark side, the mysterious, for if not, then where would poetry come from, or the arts, or music, or invention?

It might mean to actually love ourselves severely, in spite of those who suggest to do so would be anathema in the eyes of the gods.

We give up ‘being myself’ because we need to satisfy an audience that needs a butterfly on a stickpin, to examine closely in order to seek its flaws.

We exhort the young to ‘be yourself’ and put it in danger by attaching soft golden strings, strange and unfriendly languaging, all by which we manipulate and control the wakening passion of a purpose so necessary and precious to our communities.

It might really matter if we adults joined in partnership with the young, for they will sit in the boardrooms of the future. We need to create an environment where it is okay to fall down, to make mistakes, to say ‘I don’t know’ and to seek the deepest spark of ‘maybe’ that lives in us all.

That might matter.

Rich