The Best of Who You Are The truth is that, like a camera with a split-screen focusing system, we spend life trying to bring the two parts of us together—the public self and the private self—into one integrated whole. The private self psychiatric theory calls “the self: the essence of humanity with which we were born.” The public self, the part of us that is formed by our interaction with others, psychiatric theory calls the ego. It is the ego that has learned to conform to the expectations and attitudes society demands of us. What other people require of us leads us to create the masks we present to the world. For the sake of conforming or responding to the notions of others—parents, role models, mentors—we become docile, compliant, and sometimes, trapped. The private self wants to become the fullness of what it means to be fully human—to be what we are born to be, and have been given the gifts to be, and which, down deep, we have the raw and searing desire to be. The public self wants to be approved, to be liked, to be successful, to be accepted—to be what society says we should be if we want to be accepted by it. To live up to public expectations, to get social approval, I take on the public norms. I become the perfect student at whatever cost to my social life. I become the willing worker, never mind overtime pay. I become the macho man and the female female—despite the fact that in the deepest part of the soul of me, I feel neither tough nor seductive. Clearly, the central question of life may be: Why am I trying so hard to be what everyone else expects of me rather than what my best self expects of me? And just as important, What is the cost to everyone else of my doing it? Of my not becoming who I want to be? Who I am at the center of my self? Who the world needs me to be? –from Following the Path by Joan Chittister (Image Books)
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 17:24:59 +0000
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