Can We be Ourselves?
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Be Yourself?
“Be yourself” must be the most cliché and overrated advice. The fact of the matter is that nobody wants you just the way you are. Everybody wants a different version of yourself, one that suits everybody’ needs and expectations. Family members expect certain things; friends will provide a long list of different expectations; schools will demand a different you; partners/espouses will challenge your capacity to remain true to yourself; bosses and colleagues will push your personality “issues” to the brim of tolerance; children (if they come) will contribute their share too in this never-ending negotiations of visions and actions.
It is easy to tell a very vocal person to be him or herself when being vocal will most likely get him/her in trouble most of the time. It is very easy to tell a very loud and outgoing person to be himself or herself when most social gatherings will demand a certain level of restrain.
How do we tell a very shy person to just be himself or herself when life and this increasingly competitive and homogenizing society demands a certain level of outgoingness, enthusiasm, or determination not everybody has?
How do you tell an introvert who likes to read and gets bored with most conversations to be himself when most people he will know hate reading and will expect him to chitchat and be merry? Unless people decides to be hermits early in life, to fulfill societal expectation of socialization and engagement, they will need to learn how to talk/act/perform whenever is needed or expected. Bottom line, being oneself is good only for oneself. To properly operate in society, we need to turn into different “selves”, use a variety of tools we were not born with, and learn how to function within a variety of social conventions, many of which contravene our inner personality.
Finding people like oneself so that one does not have to change that much maybe an option, but chances are those soul mates will be hard to find and we know what is said about similar personalities: “equal poles repel and opposite poles attract.”
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The irony of the forced transformation is that many will criticize us for being duplicitous or even bipolar (a very popular epithet these days). People also want others to be reliable, predicable even. “Publish or perish,” they say in academia. Adapt or perish, they might say elsewhere. People are expected to re-invent themselves, in the same way they are expected to catch up with fashion, trends, and styles. Every day there is something new out there we are supposed to know about or be engaged in (a new gadget, a new social media, a new crypto currency, a new political movement).
Can we be more contradictory? When do we actually devote time to be ourselves, explore who we really are, and act accordingly? If we really want a culture that promotes authenticity, honesty, introspection, and growth we need to stop creating, promoting and even imposing so many contradictory distractions.
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This post is manually curated by @kenny-crane and received an upvote from @SchoolForSDG4
School For SDG4
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Hola hlezama,
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Muchas gracias por el apoyo, @provenezuela. Nos motiva a seguir aportando
The first step IS to find oneself, or at least devote all of one's effort and might toward finding their "Self".
The conclusion that I reached through that quest was discovering that I am either nothing, or I have no-self.
Greetings, @chrisrice.
That would be in line with those who have theorized that we are "always already interpellated by society". It is easy to get to that conclusion when we see that little of what we do is "original". Most rebells discover themselves belonging to a whole sub-culture of rebels doing variations of the same theme.
But the search is worth pursuing. At least we will be aware of how much of what we do is induced by forces outside our control.
And we can always cling to free will.
It was actually really hard for me to reach that conclusion @hlezama.
I did an immense amount of soul searching, I practiced certain moral codes and I pursued spirituality & Truth to the point of death (I obviously survived, or at least seemed to).
I agree that the search is worth pursuing but I think there eventually comes a time when a person has more or less searched enough, and found an answer of some kind.
In relation to Free-will, there is also Determinism.. but what do you think about Dependent Origination?
I be myself everyday @hlezama, sometimes people don't like it, but I don't care, I'm only here to please me! 👍
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Good for you :)
There are certain variables that can allow some people the luxury of self-indulgence. Prosperity and democracy are some of them. It's hard to find self-pleasers in poor/authoritarian cultures (except those in some position of power).
I agree with you totally @hlezama 👍
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Hi, Can I contact you at discord?
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