We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. — May Sarton

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

Author: May Sarton

Insight: Most of us carry around a version of ourselves we think is acceptable—polished, agreeable, the person we believe people want us to be. We trim our actual interests, hide our quirks, soften our opinions. The cost of this editing is exhaustion, because it takes constant energy to maintain a fiction. What Sarton is pointing to is something harder than just accepting yourself: actively choosing to let yourself be seen, strangeness included. The tricky part is that authenticity isn't actually comfortable, even when it should be. There's real fear in it. What if people reject the real version? What if that version is messier or more uncertain than the acceptable edit? But here's what changes with time: you eventually realize that the people worth having in your life are drawn to the real thing anyway. The energy you spent performing gets freed up. And the bizarre part is that your "strange" self—the part you were most afraid of—often turns out to be exactly what someone else needed to see. The dare, then, isn't about courage as much as it's about exhaustion. At some point, keeping up the act becomes more frightening than dropping it.