Yesterday, my 4 year old little Mira and I went to the grocery store together. As I was getting her out of the backseat, I asked if she wanted to wear her sunglasses into the store, or leave them in the car. She said “I want to wear them because people always tell me I look cute when I wear them”. Ahh. I cringed a little. I hate the idea of her making choices based on what other people would say or think.
But the truth is – we all, constantly do that. We live in an age of “how much can I impress other people”? I am as guilty as anyone else.
We write FB posts intended to make ourselves look pretty, popular, happy… I’m not sure why we feel the need to impress everyone. Will they want us more as friends? It’s a self-obsessed and destructive way of living. Instead of finding happiness and making other people feel good about themselves, we make ourselves look good. Nuts to them. They’ll like us because we’re so admirable, right?
But the truth is, although we definitely want friends that we admire, most of us seek out friends that make us feel good about ourselves. And not in a superficial “I love your outfit” kind of way, but a real kind of a way. A way that makes us feel like we are the only person in the room. A way that makes us feel important, respected, SEEN.
Showing off doesn’t exactly convey that message.
Oddly, I think about this topic a lot when I play the piano. I have this Debussy piece that I’ve been working on in the last month, and there’s this section that has some tricky fingering and takes some coordination I have not yet mastered. I practiced this section the other day for almost an hour. I played the left hand and practiced the fingering to get exactly the right fingers on the right notes. Then I practiced the right hand to master the octave-spanning chords. Both were a cinch in isolation. But every time I put them together, I was so focused on getting all the notes right and the fingering perfect, that I wasn’t even thinking about the melody. I wasn’t hearing or feeling the song itself. And so it became an exercise in futility.
It’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over in life. The minute I stop listening to the song, and start thinking about “doing it right” or playing for other people, I falter. The authenticity goes right out the window. And really, in this life, what do we have to offer if not ourselves? Our own interpretation is the only thing we really have going for us. What if Monet tried to impress the world by painting like Van Gogh? What Sting tried to write songs that sounded like …The Beach Boys?
At the end of the day, we all need to stop focusing on what we think will impress others and just BE. Be who you are and love the people you love. Those who love you will do so because you are uniquely you and because you validate them by truth you live and because you are free to make them feel good about themselves, too.