Just be who you are

Whenever anyone says/writes, Just Be Who you are, I kinda spit out whatever drink happens to be in my mouth at the time. I do this so I can scream at the screen, "Oh,come on!"Just-Being-Who-You-Are is a bracing business requiring, among other things, the ego strength to be different, to be ordinary, to be vulnerable.Because who we are is not that glamorousIt's messy, sweaty, complicated and confusing. It's the down in the dirt every single day project of being human.I can't help thinking about the children's book, Everyone Poops, that found its way into our collection in the growing-up years. (Thanks, Mom!) With page after page of colorful illustrations, that little hard-cover book had much to teach us. Most important: the lesson that everyone from Brad Pitt to Barack Obama to Donald Trump, poops. Yup. Just like you.  I don't know why I find this reassuring. But I do.I guess it's like that exercise where you imagine yourself on a stage and everyone in the audience is naked... and that gives you a little bit more confidence. Because you're not the only one who feels vulnerable - you're all in this together.Imagining that celebrities, and for that matter, bosses and teachers and coaches and OTHER PEOPLE are better than us makes it much harder to be who we really are - harder to let our vulnerable under-belly show. Harder to reveal the things about us that are ... well, poopy. But also harder to reveal the most precious and rare. (Because those are the precious parts - the parts we keep hidden to keep them safe.)But understanding that those OTHER PEOPLE aren't better - they're just like us, with their own precious parts, their own hidden vulnerability - can help us trust that there may just be a place for that unusual product idea we came up with, that essay we really want to write, that dress we made with our own pattern but have been too timid to actually WEAR.Everyone poops. Everyone cries. Everyone worries.We're only human. And no one is really that glamourous - not without a whole heap of makeup, fashion styling and good lighting. In fact, the very word glamorous - which contains w/in it the root form, glamour, or spell - is meant to deceive.  It's a spell, cast to convince us that something is more beautiful, special, or important than it actually is.You know... it’s not realAll that super-model, air-brushed cosmetic company glamour: A spell. All that New Age Guru glamour: Big Spell. It’s also a brand, built by more than one person using focus groups and marketing savvy to convince us that this teacher/expert/guru has some powerful medicine which - if we only buy their lipstick, book, workshop or clothing line - we can have too.It's hypeOh, it's built on a foundation that's true - no one gets to that level without having something to offer. But once they get up to there, if they can't live up to the hype, they crash and burn. In fact, more important than beauty, talent or connections is the ability to maintain the container for all the hope and expectations that OTHER PEOPLE pour toward them. More important that they are able to manage the disconnect between who people need them to be and who, at bottom, they REALLY are.Sometimes, they can do it; other times, not so much.They're only humanAnd that, in the end, is good news for all of us. We are ALL multidimensional beings with so many facets like a carefully cut diamond, sparkling. Some of those facets are stunning - shimmering, inspiring. Others are messy, ordinary, you know - human.