Grappling endlessly. That seems to be the state of the art in our house while wondering how to really do what everyone says is the most important thing to do in life:
Be True to Yourself. Just how do you do that?
Philosophers and sages have said it in many different ways. We've seen it printed in text books. We've read it in poems. Heard it in songs. To thine own self be true. What does that really mean and how do we do it?
Take my daughter Hana for example. She's 19 now and in the photo below she is trying on a romantic, white eyelet dress at Anthropolgie. We loved it; but we didn't buy it.
We loved it because she looked amazing in it, but it also reminded us of a dress she already owns; one that I bought for her when she was 4 years old at a yard sale.
We hemmed and altered it so she could play dress-up when she was 4 years old. It's all cotton with a tight-fitting white eyelet bodice and a creamy yellow skirt that blows easily in the wind. It is the color of yellow Italian ice. She loved wearing it belted tightly around her waist which is how she liked to wear all of her clothes ~ very snug and form fitting, from the time before she could dress herself.
After we returned home from Anthropologie and we found this old dress in the laundry room. We washed it, took the hem down, took the darts out and now the dress fits her perfectly. I would say this gal knows herself. She has a great eye ~ a great sense of style. When she gets dressed, it often seems that she let's her spirit choose her clothes for her. Her clothes seem to express her essence.
From her earliest years, I did my best to teach her to be true to herself. The jury is still out about how well I did with those efforts. I was painfully aware of the social wars that went on in her high school between frenemies who were out to make their cute selves known to the world by trampling over her and abandoning their frienships with her. They wanted to be noticed at all costs and they would spare no expense.
The kind of strutting your stuff, and tootin' your own horn sort of thing that goes on, makes you wonder if the frenemy types ever stop to consider how to be true to themselvs instead of anxiously competing for top dog positions.
We'll be exploring alot more about this topic of Being True to Yourself in future posts. . We're only getting started here.
