Have you ever noticed how hard it is often to be yourself in society? In today's media world, from first comprehension we suffocate in a wide variety of images and messages about how to behave and act. There will be labels, notions of appropriateness, role models, delimits on comportment, peer pressure, ambient cultural signifiers, political and ideologial speak, gender-race-regional impositions, corporate and media manipulations, and a whole host of other assaults and pressure points to navigate. The dominant modes of personality are focused by collaboration vs. aggression, comprehension vs. assertion, nurturing vs. dominance, and so on.
It is unimaginable how much of ourselves is tapered by the daily acts of fitting in, corresponding to templates, conforming to the die, and following the route script. In a better world - free from tribalism, authoritarianism, and the spectres of physical violence and social banishment - there would be high emphasis on the uniqueness and unlimited potential of the individual, and not the vacuous lip service that's currently endemic. In such an open psychic framework the phrase "being yourself" would be a senseless tautology, one thankfully uncomprehensible to realized souls.
