The world teaches us to be all kinds of things, but very rarely are we taught how to be ourselves. We are taught to be on time. We are taught to be moral. We are taught to be consumers. We are taught to be professional, attentive, apologetic, submissive, but by God whatever you do, don't be you! I learned as a very young girl in a very conservative church how to distrust my instincts, how to "ward off the flesh", how to double back on myself, how to second guess my gut...this was exhausting and stifling, not to mention painful. For all people and perhaps women especially, we are taught both in religious settings and secular settings alike that we can never rest in who we are, but must always be striving to be that idealized model of a person…skinnier, more refined, more successful, more devout, etc. And we are sold all of the products to reinforce this feeling of not being enough. Take this diet pill and be 10 pounds thinner. Buy this cell phone and be more connected. Purchase this car and look wealthier.
I first saw the movie Harold and Maude in college. It was shown to one of my religious studies classes by our wonderfully quirky and brilliant professor, who would later become a dear friend of mine. I'm sure I missed so much of the point back then, but revisiting the movie recently got my brain firing about creativity, originality, truly living, and becoming my best self. Maude, an almost 80 year old woman teaches Harold how to truly live by simply demonstrating her own wacky freedom. She defies the rules and shows Harold that beauty and life are around every corner, but it is only when we step out of the ranks and open our eyes that this beauty can be realized.
The movie got me thinking about how I can be my most honest, authentic, and truthful self...both in my work and in my personal relationships. But there are no commercials or instruction manuals for this. There are no guidelines about how to discover this person, or how to put the facades and posturing aside. And yet it seems that I offer my best and only gift to this world by offering this faulty, messy, and wonderful me as an ongoing work in progress.
I was left asking myself, who is this "me" anyway? What does it mean to “be myself" in a world that expects everyone to step in line?
I’ve been reading a bit of Carl Rogers, one of the grandfathers of psychotherapy and the founder of client-centered therapy. His goal as a therapist was to walk alongside his clients in a supportive and non-judgmental way in order to help them discover their true selves. His words ring so true in the search for understanding this idea of discovering the self. Reading his work, combined with watching the infamous Harold and Maude again, made me start pondering how exactly we become ourselves.
As I've mulled it over and over again, I've managed to list just a few things that seem to be critical in this process of becoming me:
Understanding that I am a process rather than product. I will never arrive. I will never wake up and think to myself, “well good, I finally made it…all the answers are found and I’ve just arrived!!” Never. It will not happen. I will never meet all the goals and check off all of items on the to do list and I will never feel like I finally made it (whatever "it" is). As disappointing as this may sound, it actually means that I can stop delaying gratitude and appreciation and rest and joy, and just be here now. This moment is my life. Right here, right now. Not when I finally get that degree, or that raise, or find the person of my dreams. Life is now. It’s all that we have, and the more contentment we can find in being a messy, unclear, and adventurous process, the more we savor each of these numbered moments that we are given. I can laugh at the slips and falls and enjoy the "failures" as part of the journey rather than judging them as ways that I haven't made it yet. I can take it all in as part of who I am with compassion and awe at who I am becoming.
Spontaneity and openness to life as it is. With this first element in mind, openness to experience is crucial in finding and knowing the self. Rather than fearing life and dreading the unknown, the process of becoming myself has involved a genuine curiosity about all that life has to offer; being able to say yes to life in all its uncertainty. And this saying yes is a practice of saying yes to life exactly as it is presented, without projecting my own unrealized hopes and desires onto situations. Without demanding more than is offered. Simply being open to what comes my way without judgment. The divine yes! This is about setting aside my own agenda and taking each new experience at face value with eyes and heart wide open.
Feeling my emotions in the present moment. When I allow what I feel to be my own, and when I observe and honor these feelings, rather than repressing them, shaming myself, or trying to alter these emotions in favor of “better” or “more acceptable” responses, I can truly begin to tap into who I am. When I believe that my emotions – anger, fear, sadness, desire, etc. – are wrong or off-limits or forbidden, those parts of me never see the light of day, and this kicks up all kinds of crazy behaviors as I try to repress the real feelings that lie beneath the surface. Rogers states, "When a person has...experienced in this fashion all the emotions which organismically arise in him, and has experienced them in this knowing and open manner, then he has experienced himself, in all the richness that exists within himself. He has become what he is." In other words, feel all the feels! There is no need to stuff or repress or hide; instead I can just notice and be present to each of my naturally occurring emotions without judgement. I can listen to them as mini instruction manuals about what's stirring in the deeper part of me. My emotions are guide posts, teachers, cues, and listening rather than silencing them help to guide me on this journey toward self.
Letting go of external measures of evaluation and relying on internal measures of evaluation. The outside world measures our success on so many external scales – the "how much money do you have" scale, the "how popular you are" scale, the fame scale, the power scale, the list goes on. It asks of us how we can demonstrate to fellow human kind that we have arrived, and asks us how much we have attained and where we rank on various social rulers. In the movie, Maude shows Harold that we put ourselves in danger of losing our uniqueness when we start measuring ourselves by these external measures, which are actually more like means of social control. And these measures are empty and meaningless. What does it matter if I have a million dollars in the bank if my heart is empty? What does it prove if I have the largest house in my circle of friends, if I have no authentic connections with any of them? The more I become myself, the less I look to others for approval or disapproval. The more I know my own strengths and gifts, the less I am tempted to fall in line at the price of my uniqueness. On this journey, I notice that the more I just don't care what others think, the more I become me. The only valid and reliable measures are those within - Is my life spiritually fulfilling? How loving am I? How generous am I? Does this bring joy to my life? These internal measures are what tell me that I am on the right track.
Maybe all of this sounds wildly out of control to you..."jeez, Sarah, it's so selfish to spend so much time discovering one's self". But I've actually come to see that this journey of self discovery is the opposite of selfish. When we are empty, detached from our true selves, unknown to ourselves, we desperately try to fill this hole with whatever the world offers. And when we are detached from ourselves, this desperate need to fill the hole is usually done at the expense of our fellow human beings. We scramble to acquire, consume, hold onto... We become lost, protective, closed, harmful to others. Our doors become thicker and our locks unbreakable as we fearfully cling to false, surface level things that the world tells us fill the hole.
Instead of the desperation, as we engage in the process of knowing ourselves fully, my hope is that we can say with confidence, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made...I know that full well" and rest in this truth unfolding in our lives each day.