Just Being Myself

"I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions. It’s okay to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness. That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience. I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too…. Experience has shown that one person, all alone, can never heal another. A one-to-one situation is not a good situation. It is important to bring broken people into a community of love, a place where they feel accepted and recognized in their gifts, and have a sense of belonging. That is what wounded people need and want most."  Jean Vanier

I'm about to celebrate my 62nd birthday and only in recent months do I feel that I am "being myself."  The biggest problem I have had with that for as long as I remember is that "myself" is all tied up in "yourself."  I was raised in an environment that made me think that offending another person is perhaps one of the worst things on earth. In order of offenses, the worst were drinking beer, offending someone, infidelity and murder. Consequently I have spent a lifetime trying to please and to not offend.

I don't brag too much about my progress, because in my almost two thirds of a century of living, I still want very badly to please people. This is not totally a bad thing.  But it is certainly not totally a good thing either.

The way some people deal with this is to learn to not care about anybody but themselves.  Well, I've tried that and it doesn't work for me.  I will always care about other people.  It's just part of my DNA.  Ask anyone involved with genetic testing and she will tell you that you can never run from you DNA. Like goodness and mercy, it will follow you all the days of your life.

The main reason that I, this "wounded people," is becoming himself is because of my community.  I'm in a church full of people who seem to like me.  I unleash a good bit of "myself" on them and they seem to be okay with that. I'm a leader in a group of business men and women who meet every week. They too seem to enjoy my company, when I'm just being me. They see a side of me that I seldom unveil and in big and small ways say, " We enjoy this person. We want to see more of this person".

"I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions. It’s okay to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness". That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience. "I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too…."

Read that last sentence and ponder on it.  I often think there is some other version of myself that would be better-- a version devoid of "psychological and physical wounds."  The truth, however, is that it's because of these wounds, these scars, that I am the person that I am. I can't be me without them.

The truth is this business of "being ourselves" is a fluid and not a static thing. Don't think that the "self" we are comfortable with today will be the "self" we want to trot out tomorrow. Change is inevitable. But how we change and who we become is mostly up to you and me.