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Being Yourself, what is that? That is a question I have been asking myself for a long time. Especially over the last couple of years.
In this blogpost series I will try to find an answer by sharing a part of my story.
Sometimes you feel like other people know something you don’t: their interests don’t fit yours, they make jokes that don’t make you smile while your own word-jokes are met with silence. You are feeling different. When you talk about your latest passion subject you are met with quizzed looks …
Every now and then you meet someone who gets you. A chance meeting where some deep truths are exchanged while you hardly know the other person … you just recognize something…
My whole life I have felt different. I know how to socialize. And like to tell myself I have gotten very good at it. But to be honest I sometimes get bored by conversations. Especially when going on autopilot at parties or certain types of social gathering.
What I do enjoy are long talks about ideas, life, the universe and everything. Talking to someone who gets that and getting new insights from building on each other’s expressed thoughts. To me, that is appealing to the very core of my being. Is that what it means Being Yourself?
Or is this who I am?: I have often been called chaotic, unorganized, too emotional, too excited, … feeling completely misunderstood.
For a long time I had the idea that I was bullied in elementary school, until I spoke with a friend who really was. While she described what happened and how it was still affecting her after so many years, it dawned on me: It wasn’t the others keeping me outside of the group, it was me. I did that myself. Because I had the feeling I didn’t belong.
During family gatherings or at parties with friends of my parents, I was often the person that would play with the younger kids. Everyone thought I was so good with kids or I really liked being around them. Mind me, I do, just not as much as was perceived. Later in life I realized I had chosen spending time with children over having to talk to adults or people my age.
Looking back, school time has been the weirdest time of my life.
I went from a grade A student to having to do my year over, back to straight A’s for a year or two and back down the rabbit hole. I sure hope schools have evolved enough to look at students and their grades in a differently way than in my days. No one noticed something strange was going on here, least of all me. The only thing I knew was the feeling of loading school. With all my being I hated having to spend my days there. The younger the people in my class became, the more I hated their shortsighted view of the world. I felt numb and dumb.
Although having had a perfect score for mathematics in a previous year, it became the reason for failure during a later school year.
During that time I developed a couple of physical issues, often very painful. Strangely enough every time a medical examination was unable to find the issue, another part of my body would start to act out. My heart, stomach, liver, … heavy migraine. The pains were real, but nothing could be found. I now realize the psychosomatic nature of these illnesses.
My parents and doctor were very patient but apparently no one realized something else was going on.
And then, completely tired of school, I started cutting class – I recently found a letter from school dating from those days. To my surprise, the amount of days mentioned weren’t the days I was absent. The letter stated the amount of days I had actually attended.
Near the end of the school year I ran into someone who helped me realize it was my future I was throwing away. He helped me see that it was up to me to get a hold of myself. I got back on the wagon and studied like I had never done before.
My grades were good enough, but I was not allowed to go to the next year due to my absence record. The way I had redeemed myself and was let down after all, could have easily let me onto the wrong path. I still don’t understand how I managed to find the motivation to go back and finish school after that experience.
Even that whole situation didn’t raise any questions about what was really going on with me, not even an eyebrow was lifted.
After finally completing school I went to university. That year one of my best friends died in a car accident and a few months later both my grandfather and grandmother passed away. This had such a deep impact on me and I had a very difficult time focusing on my studies. The next year, In order to pay for redoing my year, I had to start working, which in fact was not as scary as I always thought it would be. And having money come in felt really good. That’s why I decided to leave university and start my working career.
This is a decision I have regretted for many years: I never proved to myself that I wasn’t stupid. That’s why proving myself became a theme in my career later on.
“The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, see in the service to the community their highest life problem.”
During my school years, I ran into the occasional kindred soul, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Me and a schoolfriend could talk about life after death and the meaning of everything for hours.
I also developed my first ‘odd’ interests. They weren’t odd in itself, it was just my age that made it odd. An interested in birth horoscope led me to calculate my own. This was in the pre-home computer time, so I had to look up everything in books that I brought home from the library. It took me weeks, but I was so proud that I had done it.
And then my mother said she had given me the wrong time of birth. Now I realize how easy it is to forget things about your children’s early life. Even if you thought you never would. My mother had six children. Mixing up birth times is not that strange I guess.
Anyway, I never found the courage to recalculate my horoscope and when computers entered my life, I had lost interest.
A few years later a friend of my sister was sharing something about psychology classes he was getting in college. This sparked an interest on that subject. He gave me his courses from the previous year and that’s how at age 16 I learned more about Freud, Adler and Jung than on the subjects I was supposed to learn for school.
When my sister bought the Divina Commedia – Dante’s masterpiece – I promised myself I would read the whole thing. And I did.
Reading back, this story hasn’t made me much wiser. Maybe the next part will.
For now I start to wonder: Am I approaching this the wrong way? I try to find the answer to who I am in finding out who I was.
Maybe, just maybe, being yourself isn’t about the past, but about who you want to be now and in the future…
Food for thought, more on this later.
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