You Only Have One Chance To Be You
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Herman Melville“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”
Dr. SeussIsn’t it amazing that with six billion people on the planet, no-one has the same fingerprints as you. No-one has the same brain-print either. You have a completely unique character. I have a strong personal belief that God has given every person on earth a unique portion of His character. This means there is something in God’s grand design that only you can complete the way it was supposed to be. My theory makes sense if you believe we are all created in God’s image.
Regardless of your personal theology it is certain there is only one unique “YOU” in the world. By definition this means you can make the world a little brighter, a little more joyful and a little more like heaven on earth, in a way that no-one else on earth can!
Therefore you must be true to your inner core. You must live the real essence of who you are. You cannot and must not conform to the patterns and norms of the society you were socialized into, if they conflict with or constrain the real you.
We all know too many people who conform to what their parents want, or what their peers suggest or what society considers normal. But as we all know, the great strides in human achievement whether in art, science, architecture, technology or exploration, all required breaking out of the normal ways of behaving.
Not only that, in the final chapter of this book I discuss why one of the biggest regrets of people at the end of their life is that they were not true to themselves and too often went along with what other people expected of them.
One of the best summaries I have read on this subject is from Paul Getty’s book “How to be Rich”. The following is a quote from that book. Bear in mind the book was written in the early 1960s and contains stereotypes of the time. Also it was written to an audience of business executives. But look past those details because this is an excellent critique of anyone who is not living a life true to themselves:
“To be sure, there are many other pressures that force the young man of today to be a conformist. He is bombarded from all sides by arguments that he must tailor himself, literally and figuratively, to fit the clean-cut image, which means that he must be just like everyone else. He does not understand that the arguments are those of the almost-weres and never-will-bes who want him as company to share the misery of their frustrations and failures. Heaven help the man who dares to be different in thought or action. Any deviation from the mediocre norm, he is told, will brand him a Bohemian or a Bolshevik, a crank or a crackpot - a man who is unpredictable and thus unreliable.
This of course is sheer nonsense. Any man who allows his individuality to assert itself constructively will soon rise to the top. He will be the man who is most likely to succeed. But the brainwashing continues throughout many a man’s career.
Consequently, the full-flowering conformist organization man takes the 8.36 train every weekday morning and hopes that in a few years he’ll be moved far enough up the ladder so that he can ride the 9.03 with the middle-bracket executives. The businessman conformist is the Caspar Milquetoast of the present era. His future is not very bright. His conformist’s rut will grow even deeper until, at last, it becomes the grave for the hopes, ambitions and chances he might have once had for achieving wealth and success. The confirmed organization man spends his business career bogged down in a morass of procedural rules, multi-copy memoranda and endless committee meetings in which he and the men who are his carbon copies come up with hackneyed answers to whatever problems are placed before them. He worries and frets about things that are trivial and superficial - even unto wearing what someone tells him is the “proper” garb for an executive in his salary bracket and to buying his split-level house in what some canny realtor convinces him is an “executives’ subdivision.”
Such a man defeats his own purpose. He remains a second-string player on what he somewhat sophomorically likes to call “the team,” instead of becoming the captain or star player. He misses the limitless opportunities which today present themselves to the imaginative individualist. But he really doesn’t care. “I want security,” he declares. “I want to know that my job is safe and that I’ll get my regular raises in salary, vacations with pay and a good pension when I retire.” This, unhappily, seems to sum up too many young men’s ambitions. It is a confession of weakness and cowardice. There is a dearth of young executives who are willing to stick their necks out, to assert themselves and fight for what they think is right and best even if they have to pound on the corporation president’s desk to make their point.
The men who will make their marks in commerce, industry and finance are the ones with freewheeling imaginations and strong, highly individualistic personalities. Such men may not care whether their hair is crew cut or in a pompadour, and they may prefer chess to golf - but they will see and seize the opportunities around them. Their minds unfettered by the stultifying mystiques or organization-man conformity, they will be the ones to devise new concepts by means of which production and sales may be increased. They will develop new products and cut costs - to increase profits and build their own fortunes.
These economic free-thinkers are the individuals who create new business and revitalize and expand old ones. They rely on their own judgment rather than on surveys, studies and committee meetings. They refer to no manuals of procedural rules, for they know that every business situation is different from the next and that no thousand volumes could ever contain enough rules to cover all contingencies.
The nonconformist - the leader and originator - has an excellent chance to make his fortune in the business world. He can wear a green toga instead of a gray-flannel suit, drink yak’s milk rather than martinis, drive a Kibitka instead of a Cadillac and vote the straight Vegetarian Ticket and none of it will make the slightest difference. Ability and achievement are bona fides no one dares question, no matter how unconventional the man who presents them.”
You owe it to yourself, those around you, and the world itself to be the real “you”. It is only by being who you were created to be that you can find fulfilment and contentment.
Warning! Just because you are successful does not mean you are living the real you and doing what you were specifically designed for. Success is not necessarily a good indicator that you are living to your potential.
Let’s say your specific design or calling is to organize food and shelter for the poor and needy in developing countries. You have the perseverance, tenacity, and organizational ability to do the job you were called to. But instead you shut out your call and settle for a job in a Western country where you can fully utilise all of those skills and you are well paid for them. You might be tremendously successful and rise to the top in your field. But you will be dissatisfied because you are not living your true calling, you are not being the true you.
This is why a lot of people become workaholics, or continually have something going on at every moment of their lives. We probably all know people who cannot stand an hour or two of contemplation or quiet let alone a day or a week of it. Some (not all) of these people know deep down they are not living their true calling. They need to shut out that call because they think if they heed it, their heart will become uncomfortable (true), their life will need to be changed (true), and the change will give them less of a life than they have now (completely untrue).
No matter how successful you are, no matter what your status, if you are not doing what your inner heart truly leads you to, you will not find true satisfaction and fulfilment in life. If you are in this situation, remember back to your teenage years and your young adult years. Think about what your dreams and aspirations were then. It is often more clear during those years. If you are currently in those years (i.e. a young adult) don’t let comfort, money, or status lead you into an area that is not your true calling or your true you.