OUT WITH THE OLD

 TO BE (OR NOT TO BE) YOURSELF

(NOT) All advice is good advice

People have the habit of churning out advice and motivational speeches because it sounds really cozy and intelligent without (sometimes) having an in-depth to what the advice means or rather what effect it would have on the person being advised.

Giving advice comes from a good place and with really good intentions. You hear things like “You only get one shot in life, so figure out what makes you happy and do more of that because you deserve more happiness” or “never allow fear and the opinions of others determine your future” or “just be yourself no one else can be you”, or “ignore people’s opinion”, or “love yourself the way you are” and loads more.

All are really really fantastic advice's and I use them on myself from time to time as someone that suffered from bouts of depression, fear of people’s opinion and inferiority complex, so I actually understand the value of these advice's. But that’s not where my issue lies.

While the advice to be yourself is sound, I believe it is incomplete in itself and is very vague and confusing and it begs the question of which self a person is allowed to be, or if the said self would be acceptable to society, or if every self is even the right self. Most of these questions arise because when most people have taken that half advice of being themselves and showing their true color, we turn around to mock or hide away from or condemn them for doing the very thing we have advised them to do.

The question most times is WHO we are exactly and what part of ourselves is it right to become. This question has really bugged me a lot because I realize that when people advice you to be yourself, there’s usually an unspoken ‘like me’ that floats somewhere between them. People want you to be like them or at least imitate them, and that’s not something they desire on purpose, it is just what it is.

Let me paint a scenario, two friends going to the club and one of them is painfully shy (would rather be home watching TV) and the second one is the party girl, and at the club, party girl says to shy girl “don’t be shy just be yourself and have fun{like me}”. The shy girl not wanting to be seen as a party pooper tries to be herself (projecting party girl) and whether she has fun or not, she was not herself, she was who the party girl wanted her to be.

We are all different and the only time such advice would be real and have more positive impact is if we understand our differences and accept that we would never ever like or want the same things.

However this is where there is catch. There are three ways to do things; your way, my way and the right way and asking a person to be themselves is very vague mostly because:

1. You either want them to be like you (even if just a little bit) which negates the entire advice; or

2. You want them to be ‘themselves’ which may or may not be the right way. (this is another topic altogether)

So in proffering such advice it would be best if we had a real relationship with the person to understand their personality so that if being themselves is not the best then they would go for the option of the right way.

For instance, pedophiles, serial killers, alcoholics …….. fill in the blank (extreme I know) if you constantly say to them (without knowing this about them), ‘be yourself, don’t care what the world thinks, people will never understand you, be confident, love yourself”, it’s almost like you’re giving them the permission and ammunition to be those things and damn the consequence of caring about what people think of them.

Someone said the prisons and graves (mostly suicide) are full of people who were just being themselves. The problem is that the aspects of their self that they chose to express or to be either had a negative effect on the world around them, or was just unacceptable and misunderstood by those around them. So the advice “just be yourself and everything will turn out fine” seems a little naïve or simplistic to my mind.

The truth is lots of authors have written on how people can discover who they really are, the steps that they have to take to resolve whatever identity crises they face so that they can fit in. The big question however, which these books fail to answer is what happens after you discover who you are and then realize that you don’t fit in.

It’s easy to advice people to be themselves and even easier (for those not open minded enough to recognize that we are different) to pass judgment and make mockery of people after they have taken the same advice.

I’ll use the incredible hulk as my example. On the outside, the man looks like every other human, normal, really handsome and is even a doctor. But all that is on the outside, it’s a part of him but not the whole, and because he knows what is on the inside of him, he separates himself from everyone because he knows that once his true self is revealed he would not be accepted. So let’s say he goes in for therapy because he is worried he can’t lead a seeming normal life like the others, he is afraid that they wouldn’t understand him or accept him for being himself, and then his therapist says ‘just be yourself’, ‘ignore what people think’, ‘you can’t be locked up forever’, ‘just be happy and do what makes you happy’, and the whole sermon.

So nervously hulk goes out and tries to be himself in accordance with the words of wisdom and as he accepts the thought of being himself, he starts to manifest gradually till his full green self is revealed and then people screamed and yelled and fled on all sides, including his therapist that had just advised him to ‘be himself’

Another example would be the black white man everybody loves to hate known as Bobrisky. As a child and being raised in an African home, I’m sure he must have gone through a lot of mind boggling emotional trauma (identity crises and the shame of showing who you are is very very tasking and has led to a lot of suicide), to either remain the black unknown person acceptable to his family and friends and society as a whole or to ‘be himself’ as the advice goes.

In my mind’s eye I can picture him listening to someone or reading a book that says ‘Always be yourself, do the thing that makes you happy and ignore everyone’. I can picture Bobrisky taking this advice to heart, and then abracadabra he “becomes himself”. He shows the world who he really is on the inside and guess what, the same person who advised him goes ‘are you insane? Why would you be dressing like a woman? Are you not ashamed of yourself? May God forgive you (the hypocritical Nigerian prayer… story for another day)

Now Bobrisky went and be’ed (in not sure it’s a correct English but you get my point) himself and imagine the backlash from people that give the same advice every day, I know he blogs and tries to keep his head above water but it really cannot be easy being him right now.

With this kind of backlash and torment how many more people do you think would readily accept the advice ‘be yourself’?

So I guess my question is, when you say to someone be yourself, do you actually know them enough to give that advice? And are you open minded enough to accept the person they decide to show you that they are? Or should that advice come with a warning that only certain types of selves are acceptable to society so be yourself with caution? Or do we just be ourselves and ignore everything else even if the self lands us in jail or in our graves?