Hello World! I will be covering my thoughts on other peoples thoughts and the infamous "be yourself" advice everyone has had to suffer through. First of all, I want to say that this blog will not just be a pity party but an Analisa party of my mind. It'll have mismatches and horrible paint swatches and slivers of (un)eloquent writing and book reviews and diary entries and music and laughter and, of course, my opinions. And if that is something of interest to you, read on my friend, read on.
Everyone wants to be liked. Well, not everyone but 99.7% of the world does. (the 0.3% is for all the hermits that live in the Himalayan mountains and have no people around to like them). I think its an essential part of being if not a buggerish one, but in the end I believe that it is both to help and to harm.
"Be yourself". I always hated this phrase. It was always like the person saying it to me was putting down the self I was at the current moment, telling me they disliked who I was, and justified that by saying that I wasn't being myself. It's also a giver-upper phrase that says, "Sorry I can't help you anymore, you can only help yourself". Although there is truth behind it, nearly everyone I encounter who has also been confronted with the same daunting "be yourself" has no idea (excuse my language) what the hell it means.
Personally, I don't think you can just choose to be yourself, wake up one morning to the smell of scrambled eggs and decide to have a toast with cream cheese and peanut butter because that is more "you" than anything else in the kitchen. To come by this self we must "be" not "become", there is no path to travel, just an instance where everything falls away and you can see clearly. In my own view, coming to know who this self is, is one of life's many purposes and reaching the point of being this self is our goal. Yet, this should not be the only thing is view, the only defining point around which our own personal constellations revolve.
The other day my mother and I had a discussion, had you been around it would appear to be a sort of arts and crafts discourse (something we seldom if ever have), but I would have understood that conclusion as the key phrase of the conversation was "drums" and how to make them or rather find them. This whole conversation started with the common phrase "March to the beat of your own drum". As I mentioned earlier, I have difficulty with this and I began to take the phrase literally. Where can I find my drum? How do I know its mine and not somebody else's? My mother did not have a hard true answer, but I don't think many do.
So my dear readers, how do/did/will you find your drum? How do you know what sinews, skins, designs, and sounds are those of your own proper self?
I came up with a little project, and experiment of sorts though I don't know how well it works.
1. Try to be no one. To be a bland, un-weathered slate ready. To be the nothingness our society sometimes deems "cool". Try.
2. By being this no one, I also mean that you emulate others in the ways they react. Essentially going with the flow.
3. You'll find there's of something you can't help but do, or want to do, or look like, or feel a completely strong urge toward. Maybe the un-relinquishing urge to stand up for what you believe in. Or the overwhelming passivity you have when facing situations. Or the potent euphoria that creeps up on you at the through of a certain person, place, thing, or activity. Or the vivid stories that splay themselves across your retinas threatening to overtake your reality. Or your non-stop mouth that refuses silence.
4. These aspects of character, big or small, that pop up without your willful conscious power. These are you and when pieced together to make the most eccentrically beautiful drum, they become you.
Embrace yourself darling. And embrace others. And perhaps we'll all by thrumming and jumping to the beats of our own drums until we make the most awe-striking melody that'll wake up the Earth herself.
And maybe you'll become Lemonbright.
Love,
Ana Bello
P.S. Sorry for the highlighting. I can't seem to remove it.
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