Being yourself

Being yourself 





In the film Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman, Antonio Salieri, the Court Composer,
is depicted as a man driven mad by jealousy. He deeply envies the talents of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the musical genius. He constantly measures himself up against Mozart.

The film sees him transition from being a man with belief in his success and talent to a desperate shell of a man consumed by envy and guilt.

Salieri’s madness throughout the film Amadeus reminds us of how unhealthy it is to be constantly comparing ourselves to others, depending on the approval of others or wasting massive swathes of time on maintaining an image to present to others.

In society constant focus is given to what we are doing wrong and never to what we are doing right. Money and position become the ends in themselves rather than the happiness they should entail. Life becomes one unrelenting pursuit of someone else’s signifiers of success.

We are bombarded with images of what we are meant to look like; what is normal. There’s always someone faster, stronger, sexier and smarter than us. We want to be these people.
We live our lives holding out for some perennially distant version of ourselves. Some perfection that will supposedly manifest itself at some time in the future.

When our whole lives are spent comparing ourselves to others, like Salieri, we never evolve.
Life becomes an empty role play. There can be a sense of just going through the motions. What does the big house, flashy car or good job actually mean to you independent of other’s perceptions?

What is needed is for us to be more accepting of ourselves, as we are, rather than living somewhere else or for someone else . Living in the moment where we could begin take possession of our lives and follow our passion.

Patrick Stewart, the extraordinary actor, for example, skipped his 11-plus and instead wandered through the woods, for the duration of his exam, as a youth. John Major, ex-prime minister of Britain, once failed to get a position as a bus conductor. Both of them didn’t follow a predetermined path and yet they were recognised for who they were.

We are lead to believe that if we don’t get it right the first time we won’t make it. If people could only be true to themselves they would be more successful and much happier. It is this culture of inadequacy and demoralising and aggressive comparison that keeps us back not our perceived lack of qualities.

Contrary to this idea that people are irredeemable failures if they don’t follow the beaten track, even a cursory examination of the most successful and fulfilled people in Society shows us that being true to ourselves is the only way to truly succeed.

If people could just stop wasting time and energy on suppressing their supposedly negative traits. If they could just forget about cultivating their image for a moment and create from their heart then they wouldn’t need approval and they could set their talents in motion.Instead of living our lives for other people or acting out some caricature of ourselves we could be constantly renewing and creating ourselves. Outside of the realm of habit and custom we could be ourself; whoever we choose that to be.
If we could just start where we are?

There’s no need to emulate the thought processes of others or to judge yourself by their standards. As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said:-

“Our concern must be to live while we're alive... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”

It is exciting when we are released from the linear world of expectations and habit and are able to live in the world of renewal and creation. An electrifying counter-cultural world where one can think for oneself. A world that for me conjures up images of Easy Rider(1969), Jefferson airplane and Thunderclap Newman. Images of throwing away your wristwatch or of quitting your job and doing what you’ve always wanted like Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty. Living for yourself not in someone else’s head, not in a shop display but having the freedom to choose who you are and to think as you think for yourself. To be, in the words of Dame Edith Sitwell “an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish”.

As sir Cecil Beaton said, “[b]e daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” So, like John Major, you must get up on your own soap box in your own personal Brixton Market and live.