To know thyself
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is to fight the hardest battle... and greatest accomplishment.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The lesson I wished I learned.
Find yourself. Uncover who you truly are. Then be that. Always. And fight that damn battle. Bring the gifts to the world that only you can bring: truly, authentically, bravely.
Maybe it’s cringy. (My girls tell me I am this often.) But heck, if this isn’t the truest thing there is in this existence. And it only took me half a lifetime to learn it.. and I learned it, not by unearthing it for myself, but by searching for answers for my child. (Hmm... Funny how that works out. Doesn’t it go like: “children are our greatest teachers?”) And yet, THIS thing I learned for my kiddo is also one of the most significant lessons of my lifetime, and the thing I wish I knew as a child.
Not long ago, a particularly evolved and mystical, stoic rabbi let me in on the “secret” of parenting. (Perhaps that seems far-fetched, but let me assure it, it is not. He is real. He is a rabbi, teaches virtue and philosophy and also has a black belt in karate. Incredible. Right?! And he may well be most qualified to teach a little something about being a parent with that resume.) In two sentences, he blew my mind apart and taught me the all of everything that we are called to do as a parent... and in life. He said, simply:
“Your job is to help your child get to know herself. And that’s it.”
That’s it? The instant he said this to me, I felt my body exhale. Goes like: “Waiiiiitttttt a minute. For reals??”
I felt like the wizard had just been exposed from behind the curtain. And not like trickery, but instead, like freedom: one deep, giant breath. The illusion of what I “thought” I needed to do as a parent fell completely apart. You mean, all I am called to do, is help my child uncover who she is? My job isn’t to protect her? Or push her? Or control what her life looks like? Or have her become some (as I define it) successful human? Nope.
I thought I was failing…
... my child, me, society and everyone else in between because it just all felt so damn hard all the time. Like I was going to misguide this little human creature... all because I had no idea what I was doing, all because I was striving to provide, protect, teach, guide, blah blah blah... all the extra jobs I was throwing gluttonously on my already full plate of expectations, assumptions, self-criticizing. And then, poof. Gone.
Who is she?
Let me say the same damn thing a slightly different way: I am here to help her uncover who she is because the core of all that matters in this existence - is that we find ourselves, our true selves. And THEN... love whoever we encounter there, in the depths of our souls. And that we live the life as that human; no one and nothing else.
To Know Thyself
Written by Courtney Sawyer
Art by Becca Williams
