Be yourself ‘cause who you are is worth being (Keep Tryin' Pt 4)

I believe everything happens when it’s suppose to and it happens for a reason – absolutely everything - you come across certain people and things when you're suppose to, you do the little things when you're suppose to (though you overlook the great things they’ll lead to), problems occur when they are suppose to, dreams come true when they are suppose to, etc. With that being said, I have this “disappearing act” thing I do whenever I feel like I need to remember this person I’ve worked so hard to become and sort of block out certain elements of my character I find distasteful and I felt like this summer I really needed a little distance from the usual sites. I went away this summer with a lot of different intentions in mind but overall I wanted to chase down something I lost a long time ago even though I knew it was something I’ll never get back, but because I felt as though it was something I needed, I did. I don’t know if anyone else set themselves these impossible goals in life but I always do, and the funny thing is whenever I do it, my character – my whole mindset - undergoes this drastic change and all of a sudden I’m this person trying to express himself to the world but doesn’t know who he is himself – basically, it’s like being back at square one again.

The strange thing is I love that feeling; that’s a feeling I’ve always grown up having to adapt to, hence the reason this month surrounds the whole defining concept.

This year, I feel like I’ve kind of made the greatest change I’ve made in my life and it’s strange because my current state of mind is at a level I never expected it to get to. To be truthful I’m always preaching be yourself, be yourself but yet I wasn’t fully myself with those around me. I kept justifying it with more excuses than I care to remember but they all sound like blah, blah, blah now. The truth is I was too scared to admit that I was too afraid to be me. I’ve always said, being the character I am I have to feed people my personality in doses, I can’t just run up on them because then they’ll choke (not literally). But, this is where it all changes because I’ve been waiting for change to come my whole life but clearly it was waiting for me, so why wait any longer. The thing is this summer really showed me that all the characteristics I’ve loathed in other individuals growing up has consumed the hell out of me over the past few years and it’s all due to these excuses I’ve been making. I found myself asking how do you tell everyone around you that you’re the same fool you use to be only far different, and that was wrong for me to do because prior to this self-assessment period I didn’t really care about what people thought – if they like you good, if they don’t well one less worry, like the hands of time, you keep moving.

I always thought over the years that the things I admired most about myself was my honesty and my idiosyncrasies because I feel like it’s so great when you can honestly say your different from the mass and you're proud to be, but at the end of the day I was never going to lie to myself, so I gladly accepted that those things were going to be my main downfall as well. Without even noticing I became so truthful with myself, so disgustingly harsh that I became this person that was hard to look at and before I knew it I lost me. I say “be yourself because who you are is worth being” but there are these times in life where you just act like you're someone else because the person you are is too unbearable for you to let loose. In my case, I chose to be that new disgusting bastard because I wasn’t interested in being anyone else, the way I see it I can’t say I want realness and then portray someone I desire to be, just to avoid the horrible qualities I have – where’s the realness in that? You come across these people in life that want you to match their image and their expectations and you got to be careful because if you give in to their wants before you know it you’re a prisoner to that personality you’ll create to please them rather than being who you actually are. You got to be truthful to yourself and that’s hard to do but if you take it one step at a time and open the doors you need to when you feel it’s the right time, you’ll be fine - in my opinion. I’m telling you this because I feel like a lot of us always feel like maybe this world too unsympathetic and unwilling to give us a chance but as a society we constantly ask for the truth and realness but when we receive it we feel like it needs to be tweaked to match our personal expectations; you could tweak away but you’ll find out soon that making everyone happy defines mission impossible and you’re not Tom Cruise, it’s not your role – just be you!

I can’t see why you would expect someone to be honest with you if you’re not prepared to be honest with them. I say to people be true, be real with me, it don’t matter how malicious you are just be you because then I’ll know what to expect from the beginning. If your fake and your demons chooses to pop up unexpectedly it’ll be your fault when you get serve the pain you rightfully deserve. I’m just saying when you be yourself you find people that will willingly accept you for who you are and that ladies and gents save you a whole lot of heartache and time.

In relation, to the start of this post, insomnia smacked me down and I found myself awake one night in the summer and somehow I got this strange urge to listen to Lauryn Hill and without even noticing I came across this video that was very needed at that point and she was really drilling into her character and how society and personal concerns really influence our inner self. At some point in her speech she said “we been told to protect our outer man while our inner man is dying” and believe me, I understand that sometimes in life we put on this hard-bodied facade as a defense mechanism but don’t let it corrupt that great personality you're trying to hide. She also said “anything that is not growing is dead”, take a minute and really take heed to that quote folks because change is scary but it’s worth embracing and if you’re not changing as an individual then you’re not growing, you’re not moving from your current state and where’s the beauty in that?

“After all that I’m just ready to be me and it’s a lot to work through, you know, because all of us have hidden in these little boxes purposely because of parts of ourselves we were unhappy about and we didn’t love ‘em. And it's because we didn’t understand, you know, because there’s all this social doctrine that says that, you know, the infinite God with all this expression who created every single one of us absolutely different, on purpose, wants everybody to fit into the same suit. I’m like, you know, that’s deception... We were each created to be individual standards, you know, and we’re trying to fit into a standard; it doesn’t make any sense.” – Lauryn Hill (DAE - Interlude 5).

“Be yourself because who you are is worth being!” Period folks – AKLH