“So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin
You’re waiting for someone to perform with
And don’t you know that it’s just you, hey Jude, you’ll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder.”

                                           (Lennon/McCartney)

A few months back, I was watching an episode from the first televised season of This American Life. In one part, Dr. Brad Blanton, a psychotherapist, talked about his self-improvement program “Radical Honesty.” He mentioned a group workshop where participants disrobe and discuss how they feel about their bodies. It struck me that stripping down before an audience of our peers is the perfect analogy for being one’s true self in the world.

While most of us would not relish going the “full monty” in a roomful of strangers, it can be just as intimidating to bare our soul to the unsparing judgment of others. What if they don’t approve of us or reject us? Find us foolish, or unsophisticated, or just too weird?

Well, sometimes, some people will. But trying to psyche out what others want or expect of us, and then act that role is draining. It’s like living in permanent interview mode. The part when you’re asked where you see yourself in five years, and though your honest answer might be Sitting in Barbados, sipping rum and having sex on the beach (the activity, not the cocktail), you spout some corporate-babble about rising through the ranks, assuming ever more responsibility, and increasing company profits.

It’s a great recipe for depression and self-loathing, but not for happiness and health.

So Why Do We Do It?

Why do we hide who we are when the most natural thing in the world is to be exactly ourself?

As a species, we’re not innately, purposefully self-destructive. A considerable number of theories argue that we do things—even seemingly outlandish things—because we perceive a benefit. So, what are the perceived benefits of traveling in disguise?

1. Popularity. We all want to be liked. By aping the opinions and values of people we aspire to connect with, we hope to win their approval and friendship. Ironic though it is in this context, imitation is often thought the sincerest form of flattery.

2. Validation of our own worth. Some people look no further than themselves for confirmation of their own worth. Others look to a partner, a parent, or a few close friends for the occasional ego boost. But many people allow a wide array of strangers to adjudge their value.

3. Enhanced economic status. Money. Power. Fame. These siren songs of our material culture lure us to ditch who we are in order to pursue the acclaim of the high and mighty. Look at me. Look at me. I must be important. I’m a hedge fund manager.

4. Safety. To be our true selves is to risk others discovering our weaknesses and flaws. To be laughed or jeered at for our choices: clothing, pursuits, opinions, music. By adopting what is popular, we hope to escape the censure of others.

 The High Cost of Faking It

If everything comes with a price, the highest price may be the one we pay to win the approval of others.

1. Relentless suppression of own feelings, ideas, likes and dislikes. Not all of us are extroverts or leaders by nature, but each of us knows whether she’d rather eat Chinese or pizza tonight, watch La La Land or the latest episode of Black Mirror, go dancing or read a book. When we always defer to other people’s opinions or preferences, we lose touch with how we really feel. We fade. Compromise may be the bedrock of all good relationships and world peace, but true compromise is both give-and-take, and eternal compromise is never being who you are or doing what you love.

2. Misery of being self-conscious. When we’re faking it for others, we never get to relax; we’re always on high alert. It’s exhausting. And self-defeating, in every sense. Self-conscious people make everyone uncomfortable.

3. Wind up chained to a job, social network, or lifestyle that feels like a straitjacket. Years ago, I was struck by the fact that I have the skills to be an accountant. I’m good with numbers, organized, detail-oriented, responsible to a fault. But I have no love for the job. In fact, there are few things I can imagine loathing more. My temperament’s all wrong for it. I’d make more money but I’d be thoroughly miserable.

Just because we can do something, or act a part, doesn’t mean we should, whatever it gets us.

4. Danger of becoming someone the real you would actually loathe. It happens.

Who Has The Power?

The cost/benefit analysis of concealing our true self begs two questions: Who are these people we’re performing for? And why do we give them so much power?

The answer, in part, is found in our hardwiring. Acceptance by the group meant life or death in the ancient nomadic world where humans were prey as often as predators. Survival rather than happiness trumped all considerations.

But that world is far behind us. The depression, anxiety, and emotional stress that can zap us when we suppress our real self are far greater threats to our well-being than a saber-tooth tiger. As for chopping and changing oneself to fit in, the greatest loneliness often occurs in a crowd. If you’ve ever found yourself in a group wondering who are these people and what am I doing here, you know what I’m talking about.

And those people we think we have to impress, we’re the ones giving them power. A casual acquaintance of some years recently gave me the brush-off at a social event. Although this person had never struck me as a soul sister, her warmth and regard had seemed genuine on the occasions we met. So when she curtly cut me dead in public, it was not only a shock but a sting in that first moment, and then an anger, and finally a shrug. I had given her too much credit. Obviously, she was far less secure than I’d guessed if she felt her social stock would rise or fall on talking to me.

A good rule for us all: Anyone who doesn’t respect me for who I am gets zero power in my life.

Toward More Genuine Interactions

Of course, it’s difficult to be our true self with people who are false with us, and there’s a lot of pretense out there. But someone has to take the risk, break the chain. Be the change we wish to see.

If we want a culture that is more accepting, we can start by refusing to boost our own egos or cement group bonds by making fun of or excluding others based on their appearance, occupation, education, economic status, or preferences in films, books, and music. And we can refuse to “go along” when others do so.

Many years ago, I saw a video of an assisted living community. People in their 70s, 80s, 90s at a dance. They were having a great time talking and laughing. No one was sitting on the sidelines. No one seemed worried about their clothes or their dance moves. One of the beauties of old people is that they are DONE with all that. The posturing. The pretense. They just are.

How wonderful it would be not to waste all those decades before, hiding, worrying.

On a planet of more than 7,000,000,000 people, none of us needs to abandon our true self to find acceptance. There are many people who will share our passions, appreciate our strengths, value our love. How will we find them? By pursuing the things we honestly care about, and living in a way that speaks to who we are. If we do that, one by one those kindred souls will appear.

 

 

 

 

“There is only one you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself.”  

(Anthony Rapp)

Recently, I was having lunch with my husband at Uno Pizzeria. As we exited the restaurant, a large wall poster caught my eye. A bright, stylized train in a bucolic setting, the bulbous nose of its engine speeding toward the viewer, promising at any moment to break past the frame and emerge in real life: The City of New Orleans. Illinois Central Railroad.

Decades dropped as I stood, transfixed, gazing at the embodiment of this thing that had changed my life. That moment when I understood what I could never be, would never be, and said yes to everything that I am.

Turning points. We all have them. They are the revelations that open our eyes to a truth right before us, the moments when the road forks, and trusting solely in our gut, we plunge forward and never look back.

I’ve had my share of revelations and forked roads, but I would choose two above the rest as life-defining moments—all the past on one side, all the future ahead, only awaiting which way I would leap. The first occurred at the beginning of 8^th grade.

A Fool for Cool

Is there anyone alive who would wish to be back in middle school? Thirteen. It’s not just an unlucky number. It’s an abominable age, and I was no exception. Painfully shy and self-conscious (and at 5’8”, taller than all the boys), I was, to boot, a good student in an era when girls were advised to play dumb because “boys don’t date girls who are smarter than them.”

Mine was not an auspicious résumé for someone who longed to be popular. And I did yearn to be one of the chosen few. All through 7^th grade, I rolled my (uncool) wavy hair on Coke cans to straighten it like The Mod Squad’s Peggy Lipton. I bought my clothes at Terri’s, the local teen shop where the cool kids bought their clothes. Finally, in desperation, I cut my long hair super short after they all bobbed theirs.

This last effort (regretted immediately) actually won me my trial spot. On a warm October afternoon, one of the golden girls, Julie, took notice of my slavish devotion to all things cool, and invited me to go to the 8^th grade football game with her and three other Cools. As we trooped across autumn fields on our way to the game, they babbled on about some “cute” clothes they’d seen and the “cute” things Doug (class hottie, captain of the football team, 5’2”) said at lunch, and the “cute” shade of lipstick Donna was wearing.

Halfway there, I knew: I HAD NEVER BEEN SO BORED IN MY LIFE. Imagine the worst cocktail party you’ve ever endured, multiply it by a power of 1000, and you’ve got the picture.

I never saw the game. I left them before we even got to the football grounds, mumbling something about suddenly feeling unwell. But as I ran back across the fields, I’d never felt looser, freer, happier. A light bulb had come on: I didn’t need to win these people. There were better people for me out there. And I began to find them. I also began to say what I thought, to laugh out loud when something struck me as funny. To write my own stories. Sing my own songs. I grew my hair long again and let the curls fall where they would.

Graduation Daze

Nearly a decade later, after a heady semester abroad studying Shakespeare and contemporary British theatre in London, I returned to college with two trimesters left. I loved college. My crazy, wonderful friends. The all-night confabs about life. Discussing Borges or Faulkner in seminar on spring afternoons, a lazy breeze wafting through the open windows (yes, I was a lit geek, still am). But as the days dwindled to graduation, I wondered: What would happen next?

I couldn’t really picture a life “after.” For the better part of four years, I’d read literature and history. Studied psychology and comparative religions. Written reams of short fiction, essays, analyses. Even a few one-act plays. Once again, I found myself with a CV that wasn’t quite what the moment demanded, the moment being one where I turned my 180 college credits into a rent-paying job that would launch me on some sort of brilliant career.

I sat up late into the night, every night, and scribbled reams of poetry. I offer sample verses from two here to give you a flavor of that time:

(1)

3 ayem, the suicide hour

You can’t go back to yesterday

Can’t hang on until tomorrow

The bars are all closed

And the cupboard is bare  

(2)

So that you will know my face

The next time we meet

I was the one with the epic visions

And a few loose nickels in my worn jacket pocket

WHAT was I going to do with my life? All around me, it seemed, were people who had majored in marketing or advertising or some other field where you line up for interviews with the big companies who visit campus to fill their work cubicles.

I could write mighty anything (distress-poetry excerpts aside). I had a good sense of humor. And I knew the lyrics to virtually every song written since 1964.

It seemed highly unlikely that any enterprise cutting paychecks would beat a path to my door in the immediate future.

Besides, the thought of “suiting up” made me cringe. I loathed the idea of making widgets, of becoming a widget.

So there I was, full circle back to the beginning: What was I going to do?

Moment of Truth

There are moments you don’t expect. You didn’t see them coming. Didn’t set them up. But they arrive anyway.

Days before graduation, I went to my neighborhood pizza pub with my roommate Lorna. Weekend nights, they had folk singers, and I knew most of the musicians. There was a group of us who hung out after hours, along with the bartenders, just talking and laughing.

On that Saturday, my friend Dennis was playing, Lorna and I were sharing a pizza, and I was hoping a beer or two would take the edge off my near-paralyzing fear of the future.

And then Dennis played City of New Orleans, a song made famous by Arlo Guthrie but actually written by Steve Goodman. That song, that night, changed my life.

Riding on the city of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
There are fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail

There all out on this southbound odyssey
And the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls past the houses, farms and fields
Passin’ towns that have no names
And freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of rusted automobiles

Singin’ good morning America, how are ya
Saying don’t ya know me I’m your native son
Yes I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
And I’ll be gone 500 miles when day is done…

I can’t point to a line or a verse. There’s no one thing that explains the moment I knew, but I did know. That I would never be a suit, never climb “the ladder.” That, faced with the choice, I would always choose freedom over security. And that, one way or another, I would land on my feet.

Maybe it’s like tea leaves. We see clearly at some crossroads the blunt truth in our gut, and give ourselves permission to go with that truth. It seemed to me in that moment that if I didn’t follow my heart, I would silence it. That what I loved most in myself would be lost forever. So I followed.

The Shape of a Life

To pay the rent, I got a job waiting tables. I began writing articles for a local political/arts rag The Lansing Star. No money, just a bunch of young writers enthusiastic about reporting on what was happening in the world and eager to get their words down in print. The editor soon gave me a weekly column and I started writing theatre reviews for the arts section. I also volunteered as a counselor at the women’s shelter, helping women who’d suffered domestic violence to break free of their abusers and build a new, independent life. Everything I was doing felt like me.

There was some blowback. My parents thought I was throwing my education away: “If we’d known you wanted to be a waitress, we wouldn’t have wasted the money sending you to college.”  But you can’t throw a thing like education away. You can’t make what has enriched you un-enrich you.

In the years since then, I’ve cobbled together a living, writing and editing and teaching. Not a grandiose living, but I have a roof and food and more consumer junk than I really need. I travel widely, rummage through used bookstores, and root for the Yankees, all with a husband I love dearly. I have a son and a daughter I cherish. I write novels.

What City of New Orleans gave me on that long ago night, when I really needed it, was courage. What I made of it is a life.

John Prine called City of New Orleans “the best damn train song I ever heard.” When Arlo Guthrie recorded it in 1972, its popularity made songwriter Steve Goodman enough money to fulfill his dream—a fulltime career in music. Goodman died at age 36 after a long struggle with leukemia. He left behind something like a dozen albums.

I wish I could have thanked him for … everything.