I turn 59 soon. In the coming weeks I’ll have more to write about what I’ve realized on the cusp of the last year of my fifties. I call my sixties the “This is It!” Decade. I want to go out of my fifties with a bang.
One thing I realized that I’ll share today is that post-50 it’s high time to do not just dream of doing what we want. To make our goals come true we must act true to ourselves. Living as a pale imitation of someone else is the surefire way to waste our precious time on earth and make ourselves ill.
Uncorking our full-bodied selves is the only way to succeed.
I wanted to talk about self-presentation. Angelina Jolie first used this term in an interview in a fashion magazine about her new atelier shop in lower Manhattan.
Self-presentation lies in how we dress in clothes. More than this self-presentation is the act of showing up as yourself wherever you go. This is the only way to live.
Otherwise, ill health is the guaranteed outcome of repressing your real self to get people to like you. They might prefer the you who conforms to how they want you to be. Not the bold assertive champion you long to be.
Yet acting false to yourself will cut you off from experiencing the pure joy that comes from being your real self. Let the rivers of emotion flow that you feel in living your life.
It can seem facile to tell readers to do what the quote magnet above tells us to. I submit that as hard as this is to do (in the face of the shame wars and the bigotry going on) it’s imperative to let your beauty shine through.
The fact that nobody else sees your beauty or mine or thinks that we’re worthy is often shame-inducing when we want others to love and accept us for who we are.
In the face of the judgment, I will always make the case for showing up as yourself whether people like that you do this or not. You are not here to mollycoddle people who are uncomfortable that you take up space. What if you dare not only to exist you demand full equity and inclusion in society.
A person like me is content to be a Visionary trendsetter who doesn’t follow along in the mainstream and in doing what’s popular and following and repeating hearsay.
You might want to be given a shot at having the kind of job and life that is ordinary.
I haven’t met a white picket fence that I wanted to live inside.
Coming up a review of part of the Tabitha Brown book that gets at a common way that a lot of us cower in the face of the cowards who are afraid of the Other of those of us who appear different.
What makes you and I different gives us an advantage.
Left of the Dial 