Be Yourself
"Your time is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs
The quote from Steve Jobs might be an example of enlightenment. Some people find it early in life, some later, and some never. As Richard Rohr has said, some find it in the last five minutes on their deathbed in a hospice. He calls it enlightenment at gunpoint.
I am grateful for the people in my life who have helped me in my journey toward enlightenment so I can experience it before the last five minutes. Writing these short articles is part of my journey toward enlightenment because when I sit down to write I become painfully aware of what I know and don’t know.
One thing I do know is how hard it is to follow that overused advice to be yourself. How do I be myself if I don’t know who I am? All I can do is play the role that other people have given me.
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
—Shakespeare
Who am I to question the wisdom of Shakespeare, but maybe we should stop playing the roles that other people have given us and discover the true self behind those roles before we are “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. There will be a time when people ask, “Who was he?” That question will only be answered by the footprints we leave behind.
At 81, I am past Shakespeare’s seven ages, and I still wonder who I am or who I will be when I reach the state of, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” You would think that a person my age would have all that figured out by now, but it’s common if we still want to do meaningful work and make a difference in the world. It’s a journey.
Joseph Campbell, in his landmark work on The Hero’s Journey, describes the first step of the journey - the call to adventure. We’re all hearing that call, but we treat it like a telemarketer and ignore it or send it to voice mail. The second step is refusing the call. The word “adventure” conjures up slaying dragons. It’s too big for us. We step back into comfort.
The Hero’s journey is about discovering who we really are. The code of who we are is already in us. It’s in the call that we hear faintly from behind all the noise. It really is about slaying dragons; our personal dragons that have been holding us back all our life. A person in our Writing Room Workshop today called those dragons “life-sucking leeches.”
Have you allowed the noise of other people's opinions, and those life-sucking leeches, to overpower your own inner voice? I have. It was all made up. I was merely speculating on what others might think. The noise resembled static on an old-fashioned radio, as we adjusted the dial to find the sweet spot of the right frequency. We all have that sweet spot in our lives where we wake up every morning to make a difference in the world regardless of our age.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever read about the second half of life is from Arthur Brooks, author of Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age. — Arthur C. Brooks
I hope you are already doing that. If not, I hope you will hear the call and take the Hero’s Journey.