BE YOURSELF!
On reading a little article about how that common admonishment to young people to, “be yourself and don’t worry about how others think of you”, I found my self simply grinning at the absurdity. First of all, that very admonition is a “listen to me as to how you should be”, which is quite the contradiction, isn’t it?
Secondly, it raises a big question about “being your ‘self”. What does that mean? How many times have we heard this little mantra about “being oneself” without asking the obvious question, what the hell does that mean?
Being oneself has a double meaning for me. First there is the “self” that we are all born with that is simply a point of awareness of the world surrounding us. This self is undefined, unconditioned, un-named, and a source of endless curiosity. This self does not care a lick about what others think of us (hey, this is when we go “potty” right where we are and think nothing of it) because we have nothing to compare their ideas of us with our ideas of us. Others opinions are meaningless, and of course that creates a big problem with those folks called, “parents”. They want to condition us to act right, look good, be smart, sit down, shut up, speak up, do good in school, etc. They create that “self” that we are later supposed to just “be”.
So by the time we are caught in that inevitable trap of trying to please others so unsuccessfully, we get a little depressed, and someone comes along and says, “hey, just be yourself, don’t worry what others think of you.”. Well, which of all these conditioned “selves” am I supposed to just be? And if I just totally relinquish caring about how anybody thinks of me, how is that going to stand up to getting into college, getting a job, or even having any friends? Or do you mean, just worry about how the “important people” think of me?
This may be one of the greatest insanities perpetrated on people by the well meaning psychological crowd. To admonish “be yourself” without serious exploration of what the “self” is, is either incompetent or downright insidious. All our lives we are told to “be” some way depending on the ilk of your parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, peers, bosses, etc. We adopt many of these faces to try to fit in, get along, be a good boy/girl, get ahead, succeed, or other pressure to conform. “BE YOURSELF” is an impossible task until you have seriously understood the nature of the conditioned being. The unconditioned self is a glory and wonder that we are turned away from by our very upbringing. And that is necessary, so we do not do, doo doo in the street.
But, at some point in an evolving life, we come to point where we have to ask, who is this “self” that I am trying to be? Is the true self, selfless? Is our true identity, one of no identity, no conceptual image to try to live up to? Is being “yourself, being no body”? And are we ready to embrace that lack of conceptual image that the world around us so grandly admires? Do we want to “be ourself”? I really doubt it. Tlane 12/2/10
