What does it mean to ‘Be Yourself’?

In my last post, I shared how I wish to be myself in this world full of infinite influences. But one may ponder what does it even mean “to be yourself” and why the struggle? You may wonder who else are you going to be if not you?

In reality, this is not as easy as it seems. The struggle I assume is real for everyone but specially for people who take on other people’s energies easily. Personalities that are fragile, flowy and prefer to take on the shape of the vessel they are poured into, like water. We don’t have our strong ‘me’ traits and take the form of whatever the other person offers to us. Which means when I am meeting you, I will slide towards your personality traits jumping off my core. Now, I have merged with your personality and will behave in accordance to your behaviour and not as per mine. So if you are good, I will become good. If you get mean, I will become mean. It’s the easiest example to explain. But the degrees and variations are many and may leave you confused as to who you are and to what extent is the influence.

Now, don’t confuse this behaviour with amalgamating for the sake of larger good and forging relationships. Say for instance, if you are a family of five and the mother asks will you eat ‘XYZ’ for dinner because your siblings want it, you say okay because it’s okay. You are being accommodating and may be you don’t mind having ‘XYZ’ for dinner today. But what if you forget your self and start eating whatever and whenever the other person is eating for dinner every day. You may ruin your health.

(By the way, this is what happens with women in households mostly. They eat whatever larger part of the family is eating and somewhere lose their likes and dislikes. Young mothers eat whatever the child leaves in the plate. In fact, I read a nutritionist say that most women put on weight after marriage for the simple reason that they eat to match up their husbands’ appetite. They eat whatever and whenever the husbands are eating.)

So, ‘being myself’ too has intricate layers and I want to peel off these layers to know myself better. Being yourself is a journey in itself. You need solitude, journaling or as simple as an observation to note your patterns and thoughts. To differentiate who you actually are and who you become while living this life. It means the next time I meet you, I note how and to what extent do I bend to make a meaningful relationship and where I need to draw a line. All with good intent, of course.