Who Am I?

I was so excited to write something after over a year of not writing at all, and I was pleased yesterday with my first blog entry. But when I read it today, it seemed ridiculously ornate, melodramatic, and old-fashioned. It may take a while of exercising my writing muscle until I can find a voice and a style that is believable and interesting. Anyway, I was trying to find my voice when I remembered the tired platitude, “Just be yourself.”

“Just be yourself” has been a central theme for countless movies and common advice given for first dates and job interviews for decades now. But whenever I am given such advice, I think, “which self?”

Our personalities are too broad and mutable to be contained in one finite encounter. I have taken on different personalities when relating to different people and at different periods of my life. I have been sensible and whimsical, generous and stingy, a warrior and a layabout, energetic and slothful, easygoing and anxious, witty and inarticulate. It’s probably easier to define a personality by what it lacks than to list all it includes.

So anyway, I think when people say, “just be yourself,” they actually mean “behave appropriately to the situation in an organic and unselfconscious manner.” Or maybe they mean “don’t worry—you will be found acceptable.” Because, unless you are outright lying about your knowledge or your interests, how can you be anything but yourself?