“Just as I Am . . .”  Amazing Grace

“Be Yourself . . . Everyone else is already taken.”

“I Am Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.”  Psalm 139

This last week I watched “The Master” staring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Juaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams.  They are all amazing at their craft.  They are the type of performers who play their role so well that they make you forget that it’s not really them playing the part.  Nonetheless, they’re still playing their part, pretending to be someone they’re not. Johnny Depp said that being an actor/actress was one of the most pointless careers imaginable because people were getting paid a lot of money to pretend to be someone else.  At least I think he said that.  Regardless, I am in full agreement.  However, I would suggest that one doesn’t have to be an actress or actor for that to be true.  We each spend an inordinate amount of time, effort and attention, maybe our entire life in fact, pursuing the pretense of trying to be someone we aren’t.

It’s a game; a game that begins at a very early age.  When we are small children we play “make believe” in which we get to be the princess or prince.  As we grow older we refine the art as we begin to be positively reinforced—maybe even receiving adoration and adulation– for being or doing something extraordinary; something that goes beyond the “ordinary” me.  The result is that we learn that just being ourselves isn’t really good enough.  And so we set out on a journey, not unlike that described in “The Alchemis”, to find the “real me which we never lost in the first place, but instead just traded in for a persona that we believed was more pleasing to others and ourselves.  We spend a good portion of our lives feeding the shadow self that feeds the ego, and in the process we lose ourselves.  And then at some point, perhaps due to the recognition that all that we have done or tried to be doesn’t fill the gaping hole in our soul, or maybe because we just get tired of trying to please so many people, we give up and begin the quest to find ourselves again. 

Perhaps in the process we come to the conclusion that the way we were created originally is good enough.  Actually it is better than good enough—it is great!  We have a spiritual awakening, realizing that God loves us just as we are and that therefore we can love ourselves the same way.  And if others don’t, that’s their problem, not ours.  It is at the point when we love ourselves with the fierce love of God that we give up the attempts to impress and finally just come home to ourselves; home to humility; home to our true humanity.