Sunday Reflection: Authenticity, Societal Pressures and “Not Being Enough”

How do we really feel about ourselves, in our quietest moments?

I’m not talking about what we admit to out in public, nor even about what we might ruminate on in our private journals… I’m talking about what dwells in the secret corners of ”that space” inside where we are our most private and authentic self.

Whereas I expect this likely holds true for many people, my personal demon — perhaps ever since very early childhood — was that of not feeling like I was enough.

Perhaps it has its roots in being born to much older parents, and subsequently amplified by the realization and recognition that I wasn’t exactly normal, in a number of psychological and neurological ways.

Make a nice soup of inadequacy and feeling unwanted, add some neurodiversity and a bit of being a weirdo, and that’s a recipe for… I’m not sure what, exactly. Me.

I suppose I was a perfectly normal kid in the sense that I had a certain desire to be ”part of” the world around me; the environment; society.

And it wasn’t for a lack of trying, but in the end I always sought to be alone, because — at least when I was alone, I was enough.

”Out there,” it seemed like I always fell short.

Mildly ironic, isn't it, given that I was a particularly tall and *lanky kid...

Of course there’s all manners of societal and psychological wisdom speaking to how we can ”improve ourselves,” in service of addressing our sense of inadequacy.

But there are so many shades to such an assertion, and the deeper implications are often carried away, like leaves on the wind.

Absolutely, we can seek to improve ourselves if we want to become accountants and we don’t really know about accounting. We can improve ourselves if we want to run a 10K race in under 35 minutes, by dedicating ourselves to structured training. We can improve ourselves if we fear public speaking, and our path has taken ourselves in a direction where we often have to address and engage with groups of people.

I put that ”public speaking” example at the end, because it starts to touch on the heart of the issue here: I ”improved myself” to a point where I became quite good at public speaking, even giving presentations at industry conventions and leading workshops at retreats.

The point being that I got quite good at it, but I still loathed doing it, and I was still terrified every time a roomful of people started looking at me. That never changed.

I just learned how to put on a really good ”mask.”

Which gets us to the heart of the matter: So often the notion of ”making ourelves better people” is actually about developing masks of effectiveness that create a polished public façade while hiding what lies below and allowing the root issues to be left untouched.

I found myself being ”not enough” because I was a slow thinker and a slow mover.

Sure, I could come up with excellent and elegant solutions to problems that were bogging us down…but everyone was already ”three cities over” by the time I had that answer ready. And I would ”get” the joke when we were already three more anecdotes down the road.

Most of the time — and I tried, sincerely — I found myself having close to zero interest in the vast majority of things people found ”interesting” or ”entertaining” or ”fun.” And what I thought to be interesting people often rolled their eyes at or declared to be anything from ”weird” to ”creepy.” Or, at least, it was not practical.

My maternal grandfather — shortly before his passing, when I was 12 — referred to me as ”being like Ferdinand the Bull.”

Perhaps it was accurate, even if not particularly helpful.

When I went in search of the proverbial ”answers” — which I spent a couple of decades of my adult life doing — I eventually ended up back at the recognition that people find happiness and meaning in being authentic and being themselves.

Which I continue to agree constitutes sage advice. Sage, but again not necessarily practical.

I ended up standing at the gaping chasm between what ”The World/Society” imprints on us and wants us to want, and the essence of authenticity.

And that circles us back to the inevitable reality that ”choices have consequences.”

Not in a weird and ominous sort of way, but in a purely factual and tangible way… as in, when we go outside in freezing weather without a coat, we’re likely to get cold.

As I sit here — now in my 7th decade on this planet — there are two pieces of ”wisdom” I always carry around with me.

There’s this quote, typically attributed to Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti:

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

The other, shared by a psychologist friend of mine many years ago, is that some of us humans are simply ”outliers.” And we must embrace and make of that whatever we can.

Her metaphor was that some people are born seven feet tall, and they didn’t choose that, it simply is. And no matter how they respond to being 7 feet tall, and how they feel about it, they will spend their lives potentially bumping their heads on every normal doorway they encounter. That’s not an ”adjustable” reality. And nobody around them will ever really understand the experience of being seven feet tall, except the tiny minority of other seven footers.

But that doesn’t make them defective, although society will try to constantly feed them well intentioned coping mechanisms created by the norm to work for the norm.

The greater world — and even our friends — offers all manners of platitudes and ”wisdom” to make us ”feel better,” and that likely holds true for everyone who has experienced themselves feeling ”apart” for some reason.

But ultimately, those are just platitudes. Well meaning, but platitudes. More than anything, what most of us seek is simply acceptance, not different or shinier masks to put over our reality.

I never had any expectation that the world should somehow adapt to my reality, just that it should be OK for it to exist. Like my 4-year old self just wanted my parents to accept that they had ended up with a kid, even if they didn't want it.

Much like Ferdinand the Bull, I’m happy as long as I can have my little patch of meadow to smell the flowers and watch the butterflies!

Thanks for visiting, and have a great remainder of your Sunday!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2024-10-20 13:01 PDT
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