Is It You?

It’s been so long since we last met! Well, we haven’t actually met, but you got the point! Over the last few months, a lot of people asked me when will I be writing a new blog post. And that was a lie. Not one soul gave a shit about whether I write or not. Except for mine, tho. So I got to reading my last post, “High”. Oh, if you haven’t read it, then go read it first. Or stay here, it doesn’t matter. The two posts don’t relate to each other. Well, maybe they do in some way. I certainly don’t know in what way, but they might god! please just stop and get to the point already!

Okay, so here’s the thing. I have been hearing, and I’m sure you too might have, this stereotypical “proverb” I don’t even know if it’s that. And I really, truly, from the bottom of my dark soul, think that it is completely…batshit. At least for me, it is. Oh, what is it? Well, you know, the same old “Be yourself!”. This has been flying all over the god damn planet for ages now. It has been spread so much that Jabong made it their tagline. like Jabong wasn’t already a disaster. Jokes apart, what in god’s name does it mean? We keep seeing these posts on Instagram and Facebook. People are “motivating” other people by saying things like “Be yourself. The world will adjust”. Arrey! Why will the world adjust? What does the world care if you be yourself or Regina Phalange? This needs to stop. Or at least thought about. For this post, we’d go with the second option. Because if we stop, I’d be shutting down my laptop right about now.

At some point in our life, we all may have heard the same thing from someone. Or we may have read it somewhere and thought “Hmm! That makes sense.” But have you ever thought “How does it make sense?” Let’s look at it objectively and try relating it to some chronology. We were born at a certain point in time-given a name-given a religion-taught how to do shit metaphorically and literally. And the list goes on. Whatever we haven’t been taught, we have observed those things in other things, or human beings. And whatever we have observed, we have absorbed that as is, or tweaked it as per our own convenience and made use of it. What I mean here is that how can you be yourself when you own nothing you have? Even your physical body is present in this world because of someone else’s “materials”. The only privilege you have is using it the way you want. Be it your body, or your mind. And that’s when “you” come into the picture.

What you are left with now is the ability to play around with whatever you have gathered. Over all these years there are a lot of things we all have seen/learnt/absorbed from a lot of different sources, with other people being one of the biggest. What you can do now is control this “raw material” and make something useful out of it. The one major factor here is that you will make an awful lot of mistakes. And that’s where the possibility of being “yourself” comes in. All the mistakes and learning will filter out the crap gathered from other sources, and eventually, you’ll be left with the basic idea of that particular thing. From that point, YOUR experiences and YOUR learning are what will help you create your own ideas and actions. That is when you become yourself metaphorically.

So don’t think that being yourself means being a total dill-hole trying to prove that you are something. Because nobody cares. What matters is how you bring your mistakes and learning to your advantage and create something that nobody else might have ever thought of.

I could have really explained this better if I were writing a book instead of a blog post. And this one is already longer than the previous posts. So I’ll leave this here for your perusal. Give it a thought, and talk about it with your friends, families, guru, or even your dog. If you have a different view on this, I’d love to know about it. Hit me up whenever, wherever. Hope you had a good read.