What Happens When We Try to Be Someone Other Than Ourselves?
The title of my university graduation project and performance was “Today, I Couldn’t Be Myself Again.”
During the creative process of this performance, I spent a lot of time exploring what the image and concept of “I” really meant to me. I designed a stage with several different states of self. Looking back now, I can see that this piece holds even more meaning today, because time has pushed us towards questions like “What am I?” and “What does it mean to be oneself?” As I staged my inability to be myself back then, I now feel that each day I’m getting closer to understanding what it truly means to be myself.
Our life purpose here is first to be ourselves, and then to actualize that self. This concept of self is something beyond words and does not present itself to us in a stable form, which can make it quite confusing for our minds. Moreover, we see the drive for achievement, which has become ingrained in us through modern systems, even in this context—the effort to “be yourself.” And the inability to achieve it. Because where there is effort, the self does not exist.
Let’s first distinguish between effort and labor here. Effort is the act of rowing with excessive force when we feel that life is not flowing in the direction we want it to go. But when we begin to realize that life is happening, that the direction we are moving in needs to align with the rhythm of life, effort is replaced by labor. Recognizing our given talents, temperament, gifts, soul structure, or genetics—whatever we may call it—and putting in daily labor to cultivate this awareness is something entirely different from effort.
The questions “What is my self? Where is it? What is it like?” serve as a source throughout our lives—they open doors, send surprises, lead us to mistakes—to help us get a step closer to our own truth. Although phrases like “my truth” and “my authenticity” have become clichés in this era of rapidly spreading information, no matter how much we repeat them, deep down, we all know how distant we are from ourselves.
Seeking ourselves is no easy task, it’s not handed to us as a packaged program. Even the way we search for ourselves is unique to each of us, and this leads to a great paradox. That’s why, when we seek guidance from others, it often happens that we mistake someone else’s path for our own, because it’s easier that way. It’s easier for someone to give you a formula than for you to explore on your own… But this is the refusal to take responsibility.
Any information given to us by someone else must be passed courageously through the filter of our own autonomy. When we search for our truth in other people’s words or actions, we base our existence on another’s, and that is the greatest disaster that can happen to a being who has a place in this world—to live under the rule and truth of another being. This text, for example, can only serve as inspiration for you; you may agree with it, or you may not. It might open up a couple of new pathways in your mind. But if you accept everything Buse says, or if you think that Buse’s way of living is your own, that will be your undoing.
Perhaps it’s a slap only you will perceive as yours, a slap you deserve. When we try to be someone other than ourselves, we may not realize it at first, and many people are trying to live someone else’s life. In this equation, there are interests that remain unconscious, old patterns we can’t even analyze with our minds.
At first, it feels easy to adopt a reality that someone else has already established and move forward with it, but in the long run, we pay for it with the loss of our own self. Through dissatisfaction, disappointment in relationships, physical problems, depression, feeling as if we’re not truly living, becoming addicted to applause, or becoming addicted to anything, feeling exhausted, crushed, or even becoming highly successful and then battling the fear of losing it all... As I said, this is your story, and your path.
What’s important here is to remember this: When I choose myself and take responsibility for my own being, the world begins to open its arms to me. When the world opens its arms to me, and only when I settle into my body and into this place, do I begin to fully feel the universe… with the acceptance of what I am a part of.