Free to Choose Your True Nature
“The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom.”
It was a moment that still reverberates within my soul. I was eight years old, dressed in my only three-piece suit, standing alongside my peers. The colored light was shining through the stained glass on me; on my friends; and on the floor. We lifted up our voices in a pure, unified sound, singing like we had never sung before. I had never experienced in my young life anything quite like it. For a brief moment, nothing else in the world mattered. The echoes of our voices filled the cavernous space with a definitive feel of spirited hope. To my surprise, tears welled up in my eight-year-old eyes, overwhelmed by the grand beauty that we were fully present to. I truly believed in that moment that I understood what it meant to be a good person and live a good life. Be kind to everyone - always. Devote yourself to something bigger than you that transcends all of us. Live in peace. Share love unconditionally. It was all so clear, and I departed that day with an abundance of joy, ready to live into my inspiration with my family and friends.
For a day, I felt that it was quite easy to be this person. My family and friends were very willing to reciprocate in this special moment with me, since the day was all about a rite of passage for me in our family faith. And then, the day ended, and it was time to “get back to life.” In the days that followed, I attempted to live into these principles that became so apparent to me in that clear moment of deep connection. But, I soon found myself very confused by how others responded to me. In my simple young mind, I thought I had accessed the secret to the good life. Instead of warm embrace, I was told things like “you are living in a dream world”; and “you are out of touch with real life” and “you worry too much about making peace all the time.” What does an eight-year-old hear? “Something is wrong with you, and you had better change to get with reality.” So, I learned to stuff my feelings and intuition and “to toughen up” to be accepted.
Now, this is often the part of a personal story in which one might express outrage at how they were wronged by adults and peers in childhood. I am not going to do that, and here is why: none of us lives our lives in a vacuum. Without exception, we all experience the joys and sorrows, peaks and valleys, and pleasures and pains that being a part of human systems brings. Systems created by humans - such as families, schools, work places, and communities - will always be, for lack of a better term, human. Inherently beautiful one moment; devilishly oppressing in another. Human systems are largely created to help human beings in this world in some way. Families are meant to nurture its kin; education is meant to grow and develop its students; government to protect and preserve quality of life; and so on. You do not have to be that observant to know that these systems do not always live up to their purpose (and sometimes indeed fail in spectacular fashion). A human truth is that human systems do the best they can but are inherently limited by the people - real live, breathing people - who form and participate in them. That means they will not be perfect. Some get it right; some do not. And what that means is that we can count on failure once in awhile, perhaps even frequently.
In his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shared a timeless and universal perspective. A victim of the Holocaust himself, Frankl was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Within this horrific environment, Frankl, a psychologist, was able to learn the secret to those who survived: inner strength fortified by a personal meaning in life. Those who had something they cherished as worth living for - whether it was a family, a cause, or even something to experience more fully in their life - somehow gave purpose to their intolerable suffering. This became, in effect, fuel for their will to live. What is perhaps most powerfully apparent about this insight is, even in the most oppressive of human systems, each of us still has choice. When others take from you all of your materials possessions, your dignity, and even your identity itself, they cannot take away your freedom to choose your own perspective.
We spend the majority of our lives navigating the needs of human systems. There will always be someone or something that requires you to direct your energy in a specific way, at a specific time, for a specific reason. We will never be devoid of the need to play a role in one or more systems. What we do have, however, is choice in every moment. All too often, we believe that we do not have choice, which can lead us to unceremoniously give away our true nature for purposes of adapting to someone else’s needs. Our life then quickly becomes one of “shoulds”, “oughts,” and “have to’s” when in fact what we really seek is joy, fulfillment, love, and connection.
Here’s another truth: your true nature is always there, ready to come to life in a moment’s notice. All that it needs is for you to choose to let it come. It’s never too late to choose to live life anew. To share an example of how I am personally leaning into this truth, I recently left a very successful career in the corporate world, which had increasingly become stifling to my true nature, and therefore toxic to my well-being. In essence, I began to craft my career when I was a teenager, when I decided to give myself over toward excelling in the human institution of high school. I followed that success by giving myself over to higher education, and from there continued the pattern by giving all of myself to work. While I am indeed grateful for how these systems enabled my growth, and for what they were able to bring into my life, my participation in them also came at a price. I was so preoccupied adapting to the roles I was playing for these systems that I grew more and more distant from that eight-year-old in me, who as it turns out, has been the wise one all along. He knew who I am, and what my true nature is. But, without having the capabilities or reinforcement to trust my own nature, I learned to give more weight to what others had laid out for me.
Unknown to me, my not listening to the inner eight-year-old steadily created a deep disconnection from my true nature, which ultimately led me toward a crisis of well-being in my forties. My health declined, important relationships were strained, and my sense of isolation hit a fever pitch. But I began to awaken to this reality during the same time, and that I had given too much of myself away. So, I leaned into my freedom to choose something different, and I launched a new chapter as an independent coach and consultant. At the ripe old age of fifty, I am just now crafting a life centered around my true nature, which places my well-being and life purpose at the center of all of my choices. In this new life, I prioritize things differently. I create space for emergent ideas and energy rather than pre-plan every minute of every day for my roles. I tend to my most important relationships with daily attentiveness and presence. And that often means prioritizing stillness and quiet over the frenetic busy pace that has been such an indicator of success for so long. I am already experiencing an uptick in my creativity and fulfillment that has seemed so elusive in my life.
Every individual’s life experience and context is unique to that individual. I invite you to consider how you might choose to live into your true nature more. Find some quiet, uninterrupted time, and reflect on the following questions. Write your answers in a journal or on a piece of paper, and sit with your responses for a bit, letting them soak in.
What was a moment in my life in which I felt deeply at peace, connected, and inspired?
What might that moment reveal about my true nature?
What old stories and beliefs do I hold that seem to suppress or contradict my true nature?
How might I re-craft the roles I play in systems to allow a more full expression of my true nature?
REFERENCE
Frankl, V. (1959). Man’s Search for Meaning. Washington Square Press.
McLean, P.D. (2016). LifeForward: Charting the Journey Ahead. Hudson Institute Press.