Everyone nowadays seems to be ordering me, in such a ferocious and aggressive manner: “Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself”.
What they mean is: “don’t pretend that you are somebody else, don’t be a copycat, be who you naturally are, don’t intervene in the process of the default manifestation of yourself and don’t filter what’s effortlessly springing from the core of your being; just let it flourish and shine in all its unmediated, spontaneous and true form and substance”.
What they omit to clarify is the following, though: in case my true, core, natural – call it whatever you wish – self is, occasionally or constantly, dictating to me to be someone else, to imitate other personas, other characters, fictional or real, am I supposed to follow the “be yourself” guidance or not?
Because if I do follow it, I’m immediately faced with the following contradiction: by being myself I’ll be someone else; then, again, if I don’t follow it, well… in principle I’ll also end up not being myself!
My point is that this is all bullshit.
How can you be something – “yourself” – that doesn’t really exist – other, perhaps, than indirectly: via the momentary perception of a very fleeting and trembling shadow, a borderline illusion – but that is, by nature, a constant work in progress?
A work which one can very well argue that it can only be considered as concluded at the time of one’s passing away.
In this sense, the command “be yourself” can be viewed as equivalent to “go ahead and die”.
Way to go, for all of you “life coaches”, with your supposed “positive” and “constructive” and “life-affirmative” spirit: at the core of your “philosophy” lies a, barely implicit, order to kill oneself!
So, no, don’t be yourself.
Live your life according to one principle and one principle only: that is, pursuing the object of your truly highest desire at any given moment, by using the optimum combination of your skills, resources, enthusiasm and morality; the latter in this vein being: listen to what your conscience – and what your conscience alone! – tells you that it’s the right way to go about achieving what you want at a particular instance and follow this way.
And, other than that, trust that things will unfold as they should be; i.e. have no expectations on the outcome whatsoever.
Simple yet difficult; but altogether true.
But this is how you be-come yourself: naturally and without worrying too much about it.
