Be Who You Are

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
James Baldwin

Dear One,

I hear you. And I see that you want to tuck into your place of safety and pull the comfy walls around you. Having a nest is a good thing. Having a hidey-hole can be healing.

But can I talk to you about you? Because when we talk I am seeing red flags pop up between words.

Our most difficult path in life is to figure out who we are, love ourselves, and then honestly face the world without masks. And one of the easiest ways to cause suffering for ourselves is to adapt to people in our lives in ways that warp us out of the truth of ourselves. A simple way to recognize this self-twisting is to recognize our reluctance for our different worlds to mesh.

Do we not want our parents to meet our love interest?

Do we have separate friends in separate spheres and manipulate and connive to keeps these spheres spinning on different axes?

Are we ill at ease when our old friends meet our college friends?

Do we want to keep her work life and personal life completely separate? Why?

Can we share our personal beliefs and core values with those we hold dear?

It’s pretty common in our younger years to be unclear about how we want to present ourselves to the world. We try on different persona as if changing clothes. The discomfort comes when find that we are trying to live up to someone or something that we are not.

You’re figuring out who you are – who you are most comfortable being. Peek your nose out into the world as yourself and see how it goes. You’ll be surprised at how comfortable it is to walk in your own shoes no matter where are you are or with whom.

XXOO