The Courage of Being Yourself

   How many times we’ve all pretended to be something that we’re not just to be liked by the others? It’s a great feeling to liked and to be part of a group, but if you’re liked for something that you’re not, are you really the one that it is liked? Do we really need friends and groups where we can’t be ourselves and we have to pretend? I’m not saying that we have to truly reveal yourself, but if someone asks you if you like tomatoes, you shouldn’t say yes if you don’t like them just to be part of the tomato lovers group.

   Most of the time we are trying to fit in different groups. We’re trying to be liked by our work colleagues, we’re trying to be liked by our friends, we’re trying to be liked by our families, but when we’ll be trying to be liked by ourselves? The people around us are different and they like different things so if we’re trying to please everyone, it means that we have to behave different from a person to another. If we keep doing this, we are at the risk of losing our identity. If someone likes tomatoes and we behave around that person as we like tomatoes too, but if someone else hates tomatoes and we behave around that person that we hate tomatoes too, we’ll end up not knowing if we like tomatoes or not. We’ll like them around one person and hate them around the other.

   Again, I’m not saying that you should say what you think, so if you think that someone is dumb, you shouldn’t say that to that person, but you shouldn’t say that you think he/she is smart either. I don’t think it’s appropriate to behave in a certain way just to please someone. Maybe more appropriate would be to behave in a way that will not upset anyone, but in the same time you should act accordingly to your beliefs.

   It’s hard finding a balance between acting as you believe and not upsetting anyone at the same time. You’ll probably lose friends and you’ll upset members of your family, but at least you’ll know who you truly are. Doing this will probably bring you to an isolation because most of the people prefer to have “friends” that will never say anything that might hurt them and that will make them feel good no matter what. Those “friends” are people that want to please anyone just to feel liked, but do they maintain their identity? I don’t think so. You can’t be liked by everyone just because everyone is different, so what they like and dislike is different from a person to another.

   So the question is do we need people around us that like us for what we’re not? I guess the answer depends if we want to be liked for what we are or for what we’re not.