BE YOURSELF–EVERYBODY ELSE IS TAKEN.
GREAT ADVICE, UNLESS YOU DON’T KNOW YOURSELF.
-Oscar Wilde, playwright.
Oscar Wilde’s instruction to “be yourself” is terrific unless you haven’t a clue as to who you really are.
Then you’re up the proverbial creek.
- We have to know who we are to be happy in life.
- We have to know who we are to be content in life.
- We have to know who we are to be successful in life.
Who are you?
What are you doing here?
Ask yourself–
- Who am I?
- What do I want?
- What am I afraid of?
- Why am I in this job?
- Why am I in this relationship?
- What do I want out of my work?
- What do I want out of this relationships?
- What, actually do I really want out of life?
You know, as in, ” before you die.”
BE YOURSELF
Most people have no idea who they are.
Most people never try to find out (for various insufficient reasons).
For those who try, there are different ways to do it, most of them not very successful.
- Some people who try want to optimize their chances in life.
- Some want to know how to correct errors they made in life.
- Some people are tired of living a lie.
- Some people don’t like themselves.
- Some people don’t like what they think of as themselves.
If they want to optimize their chances, they’re being smart.
If they want to correct errors, they’re being smart too but some errors you have to just let go.
If they are tired of living a lie they ares on the right track!
If they don’t like themselves, either they don’t know themselves well enough or they do (!) and they might want to change.
If they don’t know themselves well enough, it’s about time, isn’t it?
Lack of self-knowledge causes wrong decisions.
They have come to see that not knowing who they are causes them to make the wrong choices in life–about almost everything.
They are right.
It’s because they don’t know themselves well enough to make the RIGHT choices and decisions about themselves.
In the sixties and seventies, everybody talked about “going to find myself.”
They were trying to “be yourself” I guess, but they had to locate it first!
It became the subject of jokes and cartoons.
People would laugh and ask them “Are you lost?”
“Well, kinda,” their friend would reply.
“I don’t know what to do with my life.”“Every decision I make– whether it’s about dating someone
or getting a job seems to wind up in the dumpster.”
(They’d usually use a different word there at the end!)
It’s because they were fed up, frustrated at not getting to where they thought they should be in life.
So they went away to find themselves. Metaphorically or actually.
The problem is that everywhere you go, there you are!
You cannot get away from yourself. You couldn’t then and you can’t now. Even if you try–maybe especially if you try– it backfires
and you learn later, to your regret, that you simply can’t do it.
Far better to begin the journey to be yourself and figure it out.
About which, more later!
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I’ll be with you.
Frank
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