What do you do when you realize people's perceptions of you aren't what you want them to be? What if that is most palpable when they say you're not who you should be?
Both seem to escalate our interest in identifying who we are.
So, why then does becoming who we are seem to actually scare us more than inspire us?
Sometimes, it seems like it’s almost easier to try to be someone else, than it is to be ourselves. Perhaps, that is because this strategy appears to give us the option with less consequence when we can't pull it off. In other words, if I’m not able to be someone else, then what is the real consequence of that? I’m just…not them (which everyone else already knew). But, if I try to be more fully who I am, and somehow fail (whatever form that takes), the implications somehow seem far more significant.
Most of this, of course, is imagined in our minds much more than it is true in reality. And, certainly, we have encountered people who are genuine and authentic and just, as we say, “who they are”. These people seem free and simultaneously attract something in us…something we desire to be.
While we might mistake this as wanting to be like them, I think what we are really engaging is our innate desire to be free ourselves.
One aspect of discovering and being who we really are is related to the ideas, in general, that we have about becoming something. For example, what do we do with the idea that we have to become something in the first place?
I suspect the question here is influenced by many of the religious sensibilities that we have accumulated, especially about our need to become 'more like Christ', which is often juxtaposed as something unique or different. This version of our becoming is often predicated on another religious feature that seems to emphasize the inherent badness (wretchedness) of who we are, and therefore sets up what I think is a false-binary that, rather than becoming ourselves, we need to become more like Christ.
But, this bifurcation sets a couple things in motion that are hard to bind together, in the end. And, because of this, it seems to result in divergent directions, including the requirement to hold more deeply to one or the other (rather than to both). My sense, at this point, is that the two are not really incompatible at all. In other words, I become more of who I truly am because of who Christ has made me to be.
Whatever layers I’ve added on to the equation about the badness of who I am, and the need to conform that to something other than me (like Christ) is predicated on key notions related to our starting points. If my starting point is that I am bad, then one could see how self-actualization is a problem. But, I think most religious traditions themselves even support the notion that I need to be who I am inherently because of who I am in Christ — the image of God in me. And, therefore, it seems more consistent to recognize, in that frame, that my ultimate aim is to become more aware of what the image of God, that I represent, is including the shape that takes in the uniqueness of me as a person.
It is in this context that I feel the most comfortable with the notion of increasingly becoming aware of who I am, including the ever-increasing discovery of the unique manifestation that is of me. This, in fact, would seem to enable the most capacity to set me free — to be who I am and to offer more of who I am to the world around me.
After all, when we see others doing (being) this somehow, we almost universally recognize what is happening.
Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.
