Be Yourself

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are,” says e. e. Cummings. I always thought that it is one thing to grow old and another to grow up.

For my life, after I did badly in school during teenage days, I was growing old in desperation – always trying to stay afloat in the waves of despair. Desperation isn’t a bad thing – really – when you are drowning. It is survival. Survived I did – with multiple degrees and becoming good at my profession.

Yet, that was about growing old. Last year, it dawned on me that I was growing old because I was mindful of the conventions and fearful of the consequences if I were to step out of the edge into the unknown. I was, to say the least, living in the shadow.

And I was not alone.

Many are mindful of what their significant other think about them – and live in quiet submission. They have lost their sense of identity in order to make others happy. Others live in the shadow of their past, of a hurt that they have not come to terms with, and enter into the familiar patterns – again and again.

We also grow old living in other people’s expectation. I was a missionary for five years, a pastor for nine years and a counsellor in a church for about six years, not counting the years trying to achieve multiple degrees. I guess I grew old because I wanted to prove a point that I was not a scumbag as I thought I was.

I was, ahem, also an ordained minister – a Reverend. To Christians, a Reverend is a revered title. It means he can marry, bury, dunk people in water, pray for the sick and kiss babies. And he can also visit hospitals outside visitation hours and even be exempted from doing reservist training. Now, a pastor may not be a Reverend, but almost all Reverends are pastors or the likes of them.

To some holy Reverends, if people don’t address them as Reverends, it is considered insubordination. So, can you imagine my children saying to me, “Good night, Reverend Father Danny, may we kiss you with a holy kiss to say goodnight!” And I could say to them, “Good night, brother and sister children, the Lord takes delight in you because you obey your holy Reverend Father!”

At the end of last year, I did some serious thinking. I am not and will not be defined by what positions I have or the titles that I have obtained.

I am just me. I need not fit into the agenda and approval of anyone else.

I can be different. I have now more joy. I can make decisions without having to think if others would approve of me. And I discovered that I can have fun, be spontaneous and able to laugh more.

Because I can be me I can be different. When we lost the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. Living under the approval of someone else is a burden.

Just be yourself. Be you. Dance to your own music. And for those who can’t hear you, it’s their loss because it could be that they are not even making music at all, let alone dance.

Be yourself. And start to enjoy life.

May I have this dance?