The Importance of Being You

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Today I want to talk about acceptance. The past week has been an emotionally challenging one for me, for many reasons. At the end of it, though, what I’m left with is a reminder to myself that I feel needs to be shared: BE WHO YOU ARE. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression on and off since I was a pre-teen. There have been three times in my life when I would say I was depressed for an extended period of time. Once in my junior year of high school, once in my junior year of college, and once when I was 25. Each time, there was no one event that caused my depression. Instead, what happened each time was that something central to my self-identity, central to my existence, central to my being, was upsetting me. But when I tried to talk to those around me about it, they either couldn’t or just didn’t understand. So over time, I gradually stopped trying to talk to them about it. Eventually, I ended up feeling like I couldn’t talk to anybody about whatever issue was bothering me at the time. The first two times, this eventually landed me in a psychologist’s office, which was actually really helpful for me, because it gave me a safe place, where I could talk about what was bothering me without fear of judgment and without worrying about annoying the person I was talking to. After all, it was their job to listen! Once I was able to talk to someone about what was bothering me, I was then able to work through it in my head, until I had fully processed, accepted, and dealt with the issue. The moral of this story is that we live in a world where social norms and conformity are stressed to the point where if you don’t fit into what’s “normal”, it’s very easy to get to the point where I found myself: struggling, with nowhere to turn. But in spite of that, we need to stay true to who we are.

I know this sounds really cliché. I know it’s been told in stories over and over until we’re sick of hearing it. But it still needs to be repeated, because society hasn’t caught on yet. Acceptance is not just about being sympathetic, or about tolerating the ways that other people are different from yourself. It’s about allowing people to be themselves, to feel comfortable and confident in who they are, so that all of us can be happier, more productive members of society. By trying (intentionally or unwittingly) to force everyone into the arbitrary shape that society has defined as “normal”, we are inhibiting the ability of not only each individual person, but also society as a whole to progress and move forward towards a better future. We see this across age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and every other classification system you can think of. In schools, kids are being bullied because they are perceived as “different”. In the workplace, people are discriminated against for every reason you could think of, and sometimes for no reason at all other than a societal distrust of that which is outside of the “norm”. And we are ALL guilty of this, because it goes in all directions. We have to be careful that in standing up for our various causes in life, we aren’t discriminating against those who stand on the other side of the issue. There’s no such thing as “reverse racism”. It’s just racism in a different direction. Still racism. The reality is that nobody is “normal”. The prototype which we use as our compass for normality doesn’t even exist. Everyone is unique, and everyone has their own gift to share with the world. We just have to let them do it.

So how can we address this problem? It has to start somewhere. If each of us makes a conscious effort to fully accept others, no matter how different they may be from ourselves, and to allow each person we meet to be who they are, then eventually this will spread. Children will learn this acceptance from their parents, teachers, and older friends, in the same way that they now learn prejudice and discrimination. But the only way that we can teach acceptance is to also accept ourselves. The emotional damage we do to ourselves by not being true to who we are is worse than any damage that can be done by external sources. So the first step is to stop inhibiting ourselves. Other people can’t accept us if we don’t even give them the chance to try. This is something I struggle with every day, so I hope this reminder is as important and meaningful to you as it is to me. And if you run into people who don’t accept you and don’t allow you to be yourself, the best way to fight that is to just continue to be yourself anyway. Getting into an argument with them won’t help anyone, but if you stay true to yourself, even if they don’t accept you, they will at least have to respect you for it. And that’s a small step in the right direction.

So I leave you with one more reminder: BE WHO YOU ARE. You deserve it, and so does the world!