Good Advice

How many times has someone told you to 'just be yourself' and assured you that everything would be fine? How many times have you given that advice to another?

I heard that phrase multiple times each year I headed into a new school or a new setting. I was the quiet one, the introvert who watched more than participated. Somehow, being myself required that I be more outspoken. Or simply spoke more. Not going to happen. I'm not sure the speaker knew myself well. Being myself often was painful because others didn't approve or like or notice who I was.

Now that I'm older, and presumably wiser, I have an extremely different view of the advice to 'be yourself.' First, I've grown to accept the introvert within me, even to the point of honoring her and holding her close. I've learned how to be myself in the midst of a group and have many friends. My introvert self is bookish and has a wicked sharp wit and tongue. People laugh at my one-liners and find my stories pleasant to hear. Those are all facets of me that thrived within the introvert self.

'Be yourself' is incredibly rich and difficult advice. Our culture, although it holds particular strong individuals in high esteem, encourages us to be more alike than different. From a young age, we are taught by adults and peers around us that looking, acting, speaking and being a particular way ~ like the group ~ will gain for us acceptance, protection, affection.

"Who else can you be?" you may well ask. It's not a question of who else I can be, but of how deeply and thoroughly I can hide significant parts of myself ~ parts that put my individuality on display.

It's exciting to get 'be yourself' as my Teabag Tarot' advice today. It gives me a reason to review how much of myself I choose to show, how much I choose to hide, and how thoroughly I know who I am through it all.

How fully do you follow the advice to 'be yourself'? What facets of your personality do you feel a need or desire to hide? With whom can you more fully expose who you are? Where do you find yourself hiding?

The Core

Hubble: Core of globular star clusters 8,200 light-years away in Ara

"Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened. You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be. I don't want anyone I know to take that terrible chance. And the only way to avoid it is to listen to that small voice inside you that tells you to make mischief, to have fun, to be contrarian, to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either."

~ Anna Quindlen, Being Perfect

I grew up totally sure that I was far from perfect. I didn't fit in to my family. I was what Clarissa Pinkola Estes labeled the "misplaced zygote." There were three other wonderful people in my family who were so incredibly different from me. I was moody, passionate, intense as well as an introvert. How could I be part of this group? If they were good ~ and anywhere near perfect ~ and I was so very different, I must be wrong.

From that place, I went to a kind of rigidity. Sometimes, I was so concerned about being different from others that I did my best to fade into the background, to be as close to neutral as I could be, to not stand out. And you know what happened? That very behavior made me stand out.

I like that I am okay enough to make mischief, to have fun and to be contrary. I hope that means I have a deep core rather than a black hole. I want to be what I might have been. I want to be that every single day. And on the best of days, I succeed.

Where do you fit? Are you one to walk your own path? or do you want to be like others? or do you want to fade into the upholstery of life? Do you know "what you might have been"? Do you want to be that?