“You? Who are you?”
Many of us will remember this phrase in the Disney classic, Alice in Wonderland. Few questions in life are as deep as that. I am James. I am a husband. I am a father. I am an accountant.
I am all of these things, but can they really define who I am? Do they capture the essence of what makes me who I am? Of course not. Everyone is unique. We are more than the labels that people attach to us. In fact, not everyone will apply the same labels to you. You are a different person to your mother than you are to your wife.
Most of the time, even the way we perceive ourselves is wrong. How can it be that we don’t even know ourselves?
We’ve all heard that if you tell a lie long enough, even you will start to believe it. Not only is that true, but we do it without even being aware that it’s happening. We are disciplined as children by numerous individuals. We have parents, grandparents, teachers at school, teachers at church, aunts, uncles, and even babysitters. In each case, we get to know the person well enough to alter our behaviors around them.
You learn to ask Dad for something first. He always says yes (at least mine usually did). Don’t say that word at church. Raise your hand to speak. Talking back is bad.
We have all of these social contracts we grow up with, and these things stick with you your whole life. Somewhere in the process, we become the culmination of those expectations, and it happens so gradually, we don’t even know who we are anymore.
We learn that boys like blue. Girls like pink. Grown-ups don’t watch cartoons. Professionals shouldn’t worry about work-life balance, just do your job. If you sleep late, you’re lazy. We’re being molded before we even learn to speak.
The most fundamental and monumental challenge anyone ever faces is cutting through the noise and finding the real you under all of the masks we learned to put on. I challenge everyone to do that. It will frustrate you, but it just might lead you to a life you’d have never dreamed of otherwise.
“even the way we perceive ourselves is wrong”
That’s deep man. Who am I? No idea because society or parents have been steering me in the way they want me to go. And they don’t necessarily know who you are either. They know what they think they see, or what they want to see, but that could be wrong.
Self awareness was the major part of my awakening as an adult. We go through our lives never asking ourselves tough questions and never actually giving honest answers. Too often we allow the jury of our peers, relatives, and heroes inside our minds to judge us into hiding our true nature from ourselves.
“What would my parents think if they knew I felt this way?”
“What would my heroes and idols think if I said how I really felt about this?”
I began to ask myself very uncomfortable questions and I forced myself to answer honestly, without the shame of imagining how other people would view me. No question was too extreme and nothing was off limits. It was a brutal process and it is very easy to go to dark places when you break yourself down like that. In the end I emerged from that ordeal completely in control of myself. I wouldn’t ever again be convinced that I believed something that I believed something that I didn’t actually believe. I wouldn’t ever again be shamed into hiding anything from myself.
It’s not an easy process and it will certainly take a while but James is right, we will be much better people if we take off our masks and look in the mirror.
For practical reasons, there are a lot of good reasons to hide who we are from other people. People are often judgmental, and in a lot of cases can literally ruin your life. There aren’t any valid reasons to hide who you are from yourself, though. The process of finding who you are is a challenging, scary, and humbling experience. In the end, it is worth it.
I can’t say I have it all together. I’m not some chosen one showing everyone the way. This in my journey, too.