“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
EE Cummings
I first saw this quote in 2011, and it immediately spoke to me. It was on the brochure of my favorite supervisor’s private therapy practice. I’ve since shared it with many clients and friends. I don’t remember anyone not having an immediate connection with it.
When I ask myself why it tends to have such universal appeal, I am reminded of the universal struggle that virtually everyone has: the difficulty of 1) belonging to a group and 2) being able to be ourselves.
It is easy to be ourselves when we’re alone. No one is going to judge us if no one is around. They aren’t going to criticize, coerce, pressure, or manipulate us in order to bend us and mold us into their preference. They also aren’t going to withdraw, cut-off, give the silent treatment, or turn their backs on us (again, in an effort to make us conform).
It’s also easy to belong when we’re being fake. Who’s going to judge us or shame us when we are bending and twisting ourselves into what they want? Want a shortcut to having people want you around? Just ask yourself constantly, “what do they want, and how can I become it?” You’ll probably get invited to places and contacted a lot. The downside is that you’re likely to absolutely hate these relationships, but many people still opt for them as a preference to loneliness felt when people aren’t around.
Of course, most people most of the time don’t realize they are trying to shape us, to “make us like everybody else”, using their bond with us as leverage to motivate us to conform. They may be semi-consciously or sub-consciously aware of it (“I just wanted you to be more ____”). They may rationalize it (“It’ll be good for you!”). I think that, when the motivations to change someone else are made conscious, most people (most of the time) stop and realize that what they are doing isn’t love, but a kind of autopilot and self-centered fight with reality (the reality that other people are different and should be allowed to be different).
The tendency to practice non-acceptance toward others when they don’t follow our rules (or the tribe’s rules) must be hard-wired into our nature. It doesn’t feel very kind to me and it doesn’t feel good, but I don’t fault people for having the tendency, because I’ve felt it in myself and I’ve met very few people, if any, who don’t show it. At the same time, it’s as hard to completely stop doing it (including in subtle ways) as it is to completely be free from it.
We’ve all had to face this “battle” early on in life, in our family’s of origin. We were born into a community, even if that community was just one parent and ourselves, and that family community had certain hopes and expectations of us. And even very disciplined and self-aware parents can have their subtle ways of reinforcing desired behavior and discouraging undesired behavior. As infants, toddlers, and young children, we because adept at picking up on these cues that ranged from a conspicuously absent smile to an outright verbal attack or even physical punishment. And the need to belong almost always far supersedes the need to be ourselves at those ages, so we expertly cutoff, or split off, the parts of ourselves that weren’t welcomed and accepted. And I’m not talking about ceasing behaviors that were hurtful to ourselves or others. But I am talking about the parts of us that felt angry, or scared, or playful, or sad, or whatever other emotions were found unacceptable by those whose care and attention we depended on. We picked up on the family rules, and our designated roles, and became little chameleons, able to show some colors, but not all of them. Most significantly, we learned the art of blending in — the art of foregoing and hiding ourselves in order to become what the group wants.
Then we go to school, and we’re faced with another level of conformity pressure on which to further hone our chameleon skills. We learn what the school microcosm of the world wants of us, what “cool” is, what makes someone “popular” with one’s own gender and the opposite sex. Most of the time it doesn’t involve being vulnerable or crying. Most of the time it does involve being tough and dominant (for boys) and nice and pretty (for girls). That’s great for the minority of boys and girls who like to consistently be these ways (and I’m not sure that anyone likes to be these ways all the time). I was actually a pretty sensitive and empathic boy, and I didn’t have the desire or ability to completely hide that in school, and that did result in a lack of belonging to varying degrees with many peers. The battle became about carving a meaningful niche for myself despite not fitting the ideal mold for optimal group belonging. Some students really prioritize being themselves and deal with the ostracism of the social group, while others shut off their true selves and blend in maximally in order to run with the herd. I’m not sure which outcome is worse and I’m sure it’s case-by-case. My bias is that it’s tougher generally to be outcast for choosing authenticity at that age, since those who conform can still have a private inner world of authenticity, but those who are outcast cannot have a private outer world of acceptance. But I think that the greater the discrepancy between who we really are at our core, and who the ideal student image was, the tougher time we had trying to balance and bridge the tradeoff of genuineness and social acceptance.
If we choose to go to university, there are ample opportunities to recreate the battle, be it in the Greek system or a student club or organization, or just a group of friends or roommates. Even in a serious romantic relationship we face it, when our steady boyfriend or girlfriend starts rewarding or punishing our behavior to shape it (usually with good, albeit self-centered intentions). I’ve even heard stories of professors, especially in small classes like music, theater, or art, guide the student toward an ill-fitting archetype or mold, rather than that student’s own intrinsic future best self. Despite all of these (and more) potential battles for authentic belonging in college, I believe it is often a time when many young adults can, fortunately, find some satisfying connections in which they feel seen and appreciated for who they are. Not completely, but more than at other points in life. Why college is likely to create those conditions is an interesting question, perhaps for another post.
When we enter the work force at a corporate or small business or government workplace, we are often hit hard with a long list of procedures and rules. We intuit that we’re there not so much for being seen and appreciated for who we are and our unique traits and qualities, but for what we can do for the hive. Of course this varies widely among jobs, and I’d wager that the average level of job satisfaction at a workplace is almost entirely correlated with the ability of it’s employees to be themselves (in their job function and personality) and be respected, recognized, and accepted. Unfortunately my sense is that such harmony between our needs and the company needs is lacking overall when averaged across the workforce.
And so we get up and go to the job anyways, perhaps for months or years, flexing our chameleon muscles and donning our masks of conformity until we feel we’ve accumulated enough experience, savings, and references to take the leap to another source of income in which we’ll have to straddle a smaller chasm between who we are and who the work microcosm wants us to be. Hopefully the damage done by having to fake it for the duration of our stay has been minimal, with the help from friends and family to whom we could vent outside of work hours.
Generally, we do move up the totem pole of options if we’re disciplined and focused, and with each new job we may find ourselves being able to drop our guard a little more, and be appreciated for our specialness more.
We may choose self-employment, to really reduce the power over us to conform, by eliminating the power hierarchy or placing ourselves at the top of it. We may have to play games with clients or customers, but we aren’t as dependent on them as we were on our employer who held all our livelihood eggs in one basket.
And the end goal for many is financial independence, and I would guess that, for many, the motivation behind this goal is more about the freedom to be oneself in the world more than it is for the freedom to stop engaging in work.
That is a lot of stages of authenticity battle fighting. And that is just the family-school-career part. There are also the friendship-social-romance-parenting campaigns we have to negotiate our realness space in over the decades. Being married long-term seems to almost always entail substantial conflict between who we are naturally and who our partner wishes we were. And social groups can resemble schools or workplaces in terms of their expectations for rule adherence for the benefit of the group at the expense of the individuals who comprise it.
And yet — (and here I’ll finally get to my point) — many of us wonder why we’re so lonely much of the time, and judge ourselves for it, thinking we’re somehow doing it wrong and should have an abundance of close relationships with people who love us, want to be around us, know the REAL us, and don’t try to change us. I think such a network can be possible, and it’s my aim as well, but I don’t think it’s easy to create. If it was, most therapists and coaches would be out of business. I think most people are hiring us more for our unconditional positive regard than for our “brilliant” advice or knowledge. Most just want to share, be heard, be seen, and be accepted (and then perhaps get some feedback).
So circling back around to the reason that I think so many people resonate with the EE Cummings quote, in a word, it’s validating. It’s a relief to hear someone point out the struggle that we suffer from and for which casualties and loneliness we blame ourselves. And this self-blame, along with all self-blame, is the authentic belonging battle of self-acceptance we wage within ourselves. The moment we accept that we have been doing our best to be both loved and authentic, and that it hasn’t been easy, we are allowing ourselves to be ourselves, and loving ourselves. And that self-acceptance practice is what will fortify us to re-enter the fray of authentic belonging battles that we all face throughout life, hopefully less and less as the years pass.