You Alone Are You…
Who is it that says most, which can say more, than this rich praise, that you alone, are you.
…..Wm. Shakespeare.
You. Alone. Are. You.
How often do we spend time thinking about all of the ways in which we can make people think good things about us. Perhaps we want to be well-liked or respected. Or we want to be picked first, or just picked.
When you’re a parent, you spend a lot of time telling your children all of the ways in which their uniqueness is the most important thing they have. They will learn, as they grow older, that not everyone will appreciate that individuality. It’s not until our confidence far outweighs our insecurities that we’ll actually embrace that sometimes, it’s the fucks you don’t give that will serve you the best in most situations.
Like just now. I cursed. On this blog. It’s something I rarely do. It’s not because I don’t curse in real life, but writing it seems to give it more permanence. Like, a year from now someone may be Googling “Tom Hardy” and find my blog. That person may get curious about what else I write about and they’ll see that just now, I added a curse to an otherwise pretty PG post. Well, PG minus my feelings for Mr. Hardy.
What will they think about me? Will they think I should curse more? Less? Only on Saturdays?
Will they think I write too much or too little? I could spend all of my time thinking about what someone ‘might’ think or I could spend less time worrying about people who aren’t my closet colleagues, my child or my best friends, think about me. In fact, a few years ago, when I started to think about how much time I spent trying to make everyone feel at peace with themselves, I started to understand that while I was getting the gray hairs and insomnia, everyone else seemed to be okay.
And then the world lightened up and the heavens felt closer and dogs and cats signed a peace treaty.
No, seriously. I could spend all of my time worrying about where I went to college or how many frown lines I have or, like I did a year ago, I can go out and buy bikinis and learn to fish and spend all of my time practicing French, poorly, in the safety of my DuoLingo account.
You know. I can be me. And you can be you. Late at night, when we’re climbing into our beds, the best we can hope for is that we’re living in a way that is consistent with who we say we want to be and who we say we want to become.
When I was looking for just the right tagline for my blog, sort of like Goldilocks looking for the right bed, it came to me that I had it all along: You alone are you. Why?
Because you are.
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