Be Yourself

THE REALITY OF BEING REAL

PREAMBLE

One among the most said things about people is the description of their person, worth, rank, office, and we can go on and on…. Yet the reality of the truthfulness of these descriptions is randomly swayed up and about the shades of lies and pretense. Most times when our friends celebrate birthdays and christening, etcetera,  we tend to hype their ego and tell them all sorts of good things, the things they would like to hear.

I don’t see this as a wrong move, in the cases where those eulogies are themselves true, yet I see it as unfair when the reason for wasting such words is merely to fulfill the unquestioned injunction which says…. “It’s your day! Have fun!”. Now, the simple truth is this: when we do this we create a bigger problem which associates itself with the already existing one…….self-ignorance.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM

I once met a lady who cautiously stared at the inscription at the breast side of my shirt “Theopet” and asked: is that your name? I humbly replied unsuspiciously: yes ma’am it is. She then looked at the inscription again, this time with discredit and dissatisfaction, and she said: “please change it, I don’t like it. And by the way it doesn’t suit you”. To say the less, I was really impressed by her supposed right in telling me what to do about my name. She felt she had the right to make me a better me by first taking off my name. She felt she knew what was best for me. 

People will always try to fix you into shapes that are alien to you. They will try to let you see how much you can wear a better look, a better identity, a better self. People will judge that aspect of you that is eager to erase the undetermined tendencies which continually weigh your self owning charisma down and down, over and over again. 

If they succeed then the problem is you. If they succeed then you were never from the initial, sure of yourself. It means you didn’t know if you were feign or real. I tell people that magic is real when you say it is, and it works for and on you. It is fake when you say it is, and it doesn’t work for and on you. That is how the human person works. When you believe in the capabilities evident and proven fruitful with the passage of time, then life works for you, your person becomes you. The deception of oneself is the most heartbreaking endeavor a person would ever want to experience. The moment you’re no longer yourself, you have stopped existing, you are only living. You are living because there is still breath in you. And once the breath is taken from you, you never lived at all, because there will be nothing left for which you could ever be remembered, and your memory will pass away like a shadow.

WHAT HAPPENED

You didn’t just choose to be feign. Something happened. Something led to another. You were not sure of yourself, your capabilities, your worries and your fears. You were not sure of the results of the uncertainties of life. No body is sure of the effects and claims of the future, infact, it is a necessary fear that should engulf every ambitious being.  Yet, the powers of indecision and inferiority complex are so enormous that they can rob one of his/her future, that future which is itself not certain. Inferiority complex does not make, it mals. It steals and does not replace nor return. When you begin to feel too inferior to do certain things, you will definitely wallow into the realm of indecision. You will be forced to be someone else, to be something else. You will be forced to imitate someone else and something else.

Imitation is limitation! Imitation is never original. It only gains etymology from a bearing. When an object imitates a subject, the object can never achieve higher than that subject. Take for instance, if I choose to learn how to build a chair, what I’m learning is how to build a chair and not how to build a particular chair. But if I choose to imitate someone’s style of building a chair, I will end up limiting myself to only that style and nothing more. We can go on and on to cite examples, but the alarming fact is this: imitation kills the power of ingenuity, it renders one’s initiatives useless.

WHAT DO WE DO

The   self is not an object of a mistaken apparatus. It’s not a mere attribute given to a unique class of living things. Rather, it is a complex and an impossible reality. But if so, how then can the self express realness? Realness is not a description, it’s an attitude, it’s a  character, it’s a person. It means that you don’t need to express it. It expresses itself. I am who I am because that is who I am. I become feign when I attempt to hinder myself from expressing itself. It expresses itself in applauses, mistakes, failures, successes, setbacks, promotions, reprimands, encouragements, difficulties, joys, it expresses itself in many more.

So, do dust off those feigns which you have acquired and wear the amice of realness, so that you may be once more, true to who you are.

THEOPET.