Be what you is...

I’m sitting here this morning, yes it is morning, sad as it seems that I am not asleep, listening to Peter snore on the couch, and thinking about life and what it means to live. I’ve been reading blogs and looking at Facebook and thinking that life is an interesting thing. There is an old country song that says, “It takes all kinds of people to make a world” (I even double checked, it was sung by Roy Orbison). That is true, it does take all kinds of people, and believe me there are all kinds of people in this world. We each have a different idea of what life should be like, different definitions for things, different ideas of how things should be done, different paradigms that define the way we see things, different views of the same situations, different everything. It’s good to be different, to be true to yourself, within reason. But who’s to say what’s within reason? We have cultural norms which provide certain guidelines, or other belief sets which provide a pattern for living, but there is still a considerable area of grey where our differences may be expressed.

One person looks at something and says it’s this way, another says it’s that way. It may be that they are both right/wrong. Many times there is no one right answer. I used to question myself because I would attempt to judge myself by some standard that I thought was out there and I didn’t understand it. I thought it was there, but it was a figment of my imagination. Yet, during that time that I thought it was there, it placed a great weight on me because I thought I would never measure up. It took me a while to finally get it through to myself that the only standard we need to measure ourselves against is our own, but not one that we create based on what we think other’s are thinking, one that actually makes sense in our heart of hearts. We should never be made to feel worse about ourselves because of our standard, apart from recognizing that there is constant and continual room for improvement. We can and should acknowledge other’s influences on the creation of our standard. If there is someone you admire and respect, it’s okay to seek for those in them that you admire and respect, but tailor it to you and make it make sense in your life.

Think of Aesop’s fables; the one about the crow who admired the peacocks and finally, in an attempt to be as fine as the birds he admired, he stuck peacock feathers into his tail to be like them. It didn’t work of course and they mocked and ridiculed him. The crow was just as fine a bird by being the best crow that he could be, he didn’t need to pretend or attempt to be any other type of bird. I think that (and this is my view entirely) people need to be okay with who/where they are at the current time to have strength and inner encouragement to work and move forward along the line to reaching one’s standard. We should be constantly seeking to improve, but according to our own strengths and desires, not someone else’s. I also think it is important to determine some specifics in our standards and our quest for improvement. Businesses recognize the benefit of achieving milestones in the completion of things, why should the principle differ for individuals. We are what we make of ourselves. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Are you happy with what you get? If so, great, keep going. If not, what needs to be done differently? Do you actually know what you want to get so that you’ll be able to know what you need to do to get it? It’s very unlikely that you’ll ever be successful by judging yourself by another’s standard because our paradigms are very different, and that’s ok.

We are all living, and while our lives are intertwined and we impact those around us, we are better off living our lives the best that we can. Like we learn from the movie Cool Runnings, if you walk/talk/are Jamaican, you better bobsled Jamaican. If you are you, the best you that you can be, is you, not your interpretation of someone else’s version of what you think they think you should be. If that sounds confusing, good, it should be. I can be very confusing to try to wrap your mind around figuring out what you think other’s think you should think. Think for yourself, create your own standard, but create it and then work to be it. One of my favorite quotes sums it up, “You got to be what you is, ‘cause if you be what you ain’t, you ain’t what you is.”