Sounds preachy, but it’s right: be true to yourself
One of the pure joys of my job — teaching English on the college level — is getting to spend time with young people still working out their identities and finding their own way. In my composition classes, they tell me (and each other) their stories, and in my literature classes, they wrestle with Emerson, Dickinson, and Shakespeare, among others, absorbing it all and testing new ideas against their experience. We discuss, we debate, we search for meaning, we try to find common ground.
It is usually easier for the older ones — there is so much difference between being 17 and being 20 or 21 — while the younger ones sometimes struggle, which might not be so apparent on the surface, but is abundantly clear in their papers and journals.
Years ago, I had a young man taking my American Literature class, and in his journal entry on the poet Allen Ginsberg, he disclosed that he was gay and described in heartbreaking detail his struggle with reconciling his sexual orientation with his religious faith. A couple of years after he left our college, I learned that he had committed suicide.
I have read so many of these journals over the years. Sometimes the entries involve the roiling seas of human relationships, the difficult choices that young people face, and the consequences of those choices. For guidance, we might turn back to Shakespeare: “This above all: To thine own self be true.” But what does it really mean?
Perhaps it means, among other things, not sacrificing any part of yourself to “fit in” or to get people to like you. This kind of sacrifice might take many forms, from laughing at a racist joke to selling out a friend to participating in any kind of cruelty toward another person to going further than you are prepared to go on a date. You have to ask yourself — always, always, always — whether doing things in the hope that someone will like you more is more important than doing things that will certainly cause you to like yourself less?
The truth is that people learn this lesson at various stages in their lives, and some people never learn it at all. The vast majority of these people live their lives in confusion and misery, never understanding why their relationships don’t work out or why every new love interest turns out to be a dud. When you make other people’s opinion of you more important than your opinion of yourself, you are on the wrong path, a path that leads to codependency and despair.
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You must remember that you are always in control of the decisions you make. You must not blame peer pressure, or your parents, or alcohol, or anything else, for your decisions. You alone must bear the consequences of your decisions — for better or worse — so it stands to reason that you must also accept the responsibility for making good choices. Hopefully, you will notice that when you make good choices, you feel empowered and proud of yourself. Hopefully, you will notice that when your peers make bad choices (or when you make them yourself), that you suffer the consequences, whether it is a blow to your reputation or your own self-respect. Remember, even if no one ever finds out what you do, you yourself will know, and that matters so much more than you might think.
“This above all: To thine own self be true.” It seems to me that so many college students feel the pressure from their parents to declare a major based on income potential — or what the parents perceive to be the best path to a successful career — rather than choosing a major that really suits them. This is almost always a bad idea. I have seen so many students choose a major because it led to a high-paying job, only to abandon that job a few years later and return to school because they “wanted to do something they actually liked” instead of doing a job every day that they genuinely hated. Regardless of how nice a car you drive, if you are driving it each day to a job you hate, it will not make your life any better.
Still, some students do not heed Thoreau’s admonition to embrace the simple life, believing that money and possessions really are the key ingredients to a happy life. Why, after all, does almost everyone play the lottery, as if wealth is the answer to all of life’s problems? Because our materialistic culture teaches us that we will be happier and more popular and better looking if we buy this car or that soda or that deodorant. We are besieged on all sides with this message.
Did you ever notice that when you actually do buy something new, the buzz lasts for just a short time before you begin looking for that “next high” that will make you happy? Your happiness is always out in front of you, a carrot on the stick you never quite catch up with. Pretty soon, you are not living in your life, but toward it — toward the end of the day, the end of the week. Toward summer vacation. Toward retirement. Toward that great reward in the hereafter.
If all of that sounds peachy, well OK, I guess. But is this the life you imagine for yourself, one in which you spend the majority of your time on this Earth waiting and wanting?
If not, you better spend a little more of your time thinking about what it means to be true to yourself.
(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. He will be reading from his new book, The Way We Say Goodbye, at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 23 at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.)
