Oh To Be You

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does it mean to be yourself?

How can you be anyone other than yourself?

If, in any given moment and facing any given situation, you consider how George Washington might respond and act in that fashion, surely you have not become George Washington. You are still you. You may have modeled your behavior on an interpretation of George Washington’s behavior, but the action you took (or did not take) was yours.

Try as you might, you can not be anyone else.

To accept yourself is another matter. The urge to strive and the desire to change contain the implication of personal deficiency. It also contains the implication that someone knows better than you. But one’s genius does not come from without. It comes from within. And that is often the thing most feared.

To want to be yourself, now that is an accomplishment.