Years ago, I went to a concert with my family and when the musician came down into the audience, I darted after him to see if I could get up close. I was probably only 8 or so at the time, so you can imagine my parents’ horror and worry that I would get swallowed up and carried away in the sea of strangers.
Meanwhile, I was filled with joy and excitement, wanting to see how close I could get, and probably since I was young, people let me move in front of them, right up to the musician. It was so cool. I felt famous by association. And despite being young, I actually had a pretty good sense of direction and remembered the area where I came from, finding my way back easily, much to my parents’ relief.
That is one of just a few unique times in my life when I remember fully following an urge without feeling any of the shadows of thinking about what I “should” do or how I was “supposed” to behave. Maybe because it was early enough in childhood that I hadn’t yet been bombarded by all the messages everywhere that tell us to ignore what we feel and follow the rules (and not just the explicit ones, but the silent-killer implicit ones too).
Fast forward a whole bunch of years to now, when it feels like I am only just beginning to learn my way out of those years of conditioning. Martha Beck’s recent book, The Way of Integrity, bundles up for us all the ways in which we lose our true selves every time we acquiesce to all the agendas all around us all the time. Every time we’re pulled to fulfill someone else’s expectation, to please someone else’s story about how we “should” be, we turn away from what is true for ourselves. After reading her book, I can see the myriad of ways I lose a little part of my true self each time I focus more on that figurative need to “be good” than to be ME.
But I want to be me more than I want to be anyone or anything else.
So I’m starting small. It continues to surprise me, almost every day, how many concessions (or maybe small white lies) I tell in service of making others more comfortable, even if it’s at the expense of my own comfort. Each of those lies, even when small, pull me a little bit away from knowing and feeling what is true to me. Which makes it all the more compelling to turn that around – wouldn’t it be so interesting if I knew the true me?
I can see it’s a long journey ahead to reclaim the clarity of spirit that 8-year-old had when she ran, big-eyed and full of adventure, toward something that excited her, with no concern for what others wanted or expected of her. But maybe if, each day, I slow down long enough to check what I’m really feeling, holding my words until I know, that I might start to find and reveal my true self, even if it’s only just to me.
Don’t wander too far, friends…