Be yourself (they say)

A friend once voiced their dislike of people always talking about themselves. Since then I’ve been careful (not always successfully) not to fall into that trap.

Growing up, at least in my culture, people are quick to encourage individuality. So if talking about yourself is what you naturally like to do, is it being false to yourself not to do so? If it takes effort to be someone else then does this not contradict the idea of trying to be an individual?

I have found that if you do something for so long, eventually you become what you do. So then, when people say “be yourself”, what meaning are we to take from that? For me, ‘myself’ is not something that is set in stone; if anything a major component of my personality is the desire to be someone else.

Qualities

Unfortunately I used to be very insular and watch a lot of TV and movies and read fiction and so the person I used to aim to be wasn’t a person based in reality; and this throws up all sorts of problems. The more you get out into the reality of our world, the more you start to base your idolising on actual people. This is important because real people aren’t ‘perfect’.

Everyone has both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ traits in play in every action of their lives (I put good and evil in inverted commas because the eventually boil down to us all being selfish.

So next time you are encouraged to be yourself, remember that you are what you do so please don’t be too quick to define yourself. Be sure to base your idolising on real people (and don’t forget that every decision you make is down to your selfish instinct).