Being compared to a clown is rarely a compliment. Rather, the voice sounds condemnation, or even mockery. Slava Polunin made clowning his life's work. He is not afraid to be funny, but at the same time he has filled his life with a subtle philosophy of inner happiness. He knows how to be himself even in a bright hat and huge boots. His secrets are not secrets at all. This is a story about the happiness of a fool, collected from simple advice.
Slava Polunin is a world-famous actor, clown, and mime. In life he is a bright, charming person. But from time to time he also experiences doubts about the correctness of his life. This is how Polunin talks about his method, which he himself called “putting your feet in the water”:
Every 12 years I change my life. And when I decide what I want to do, I go to the village for a month, to the river, to think about life in silence. I just sit on the shore and listen to myself. I wonder who I am. Then I start from scratch and move on.
This is his personal way of understanding himself. In order to understand how to become yourself, you don’t need to literally sit on the bank of a river. The river may well be imaginary. And for small daily joys, you don’t have to try on a red clown nose. There are a few more recipes to understand. Choose your favorite one for yourself.
What are you trying to hide?
Find what you are ashamed of. You can't be yourself when you're trying to hide part of yourself from prying eyes. Clearly define what you are ashamed of about yourself, and be prepared to speak openly about it. Being yourself means being willing to show yourself as you are, and not as you think others will accept you. Larry King immediately spoke about his shortcomings and this simplified his communication with any interlocutor. Often he didn't even have to do this, but being willing to talk about his shortcomings made him a better communicator and made his life a lot easier.
Part I Presentation (ages 14–39)
Larry
Be me
I'm not entirely sure what this means. I guess the problem is that I haven't thought about it very much. An unexamined life is not considered worthy. I always felt that in this sense I was okay. I always felt like I thought about life's issues more than enough. As an introvert, I see other people around me leading seemingly free lifestyles while I quietly observe and reflect on it all. Maybe it's because I'm just calm. It turns out that if I spent all this time thinking, then I can easily answer the question concerning my essence. But I can not.
Am I the totality of my actions and manners? Can someone record my reactions so they can recreate me? Or is my actual self the way I think? If I wrote down the internal conversations that happen in my head every day, would that be enough for another person to understand what it means to be me? Besides, how can another person understand me without knowing my backstory or my memories? All this one way or another can be considered an external manifestation of my “I”. My actions, feelings, memories present themselves to me, and my “I” reacts to them.
What then is left, what shapes me, when all these things are subtracted? That's the main question, isn't it? And I'm afraid I don't really think about it that much. I don't have enough patience for a scientific approach; I don't ask questions that I don't think have answers. I don't agree with the idea that getting an answer isn't the end goal. But this, I believe, also applies to part of my “I”. Therefore, it turned out to be difficult for me to offer any ideas for this project. I have a hard time deciding what should be considered everyday minutiae that shouldn't be mentioned and what is a key topic that requires research.
In the end, I decided to just start writing and see where my thoughts took me...
Rush
If you are in a constant rush, you may forget who you really are. To rush means to place your habits and thoughts in the grip of time. You can't be yourself when you're in a hurry. Stop running, turn back and say to yourself who is running behind you, “Gotcha?!” Make stops when talking to people. Slow down the pace. The rule here is: the more you rush, the further you run away from yourself . If you are asked a question point blank: “You must make a decision right now. So yes or no"? The answer should always be “no”. No regrets. This is the price for happiness.
Preface by the author
When I was in my early twenties and first entered the public service, I realized that I was really interested in the question of what it meant to be in other people's shoes.
It seemed strange to me that people say almost nothing about their inner essence, but, on the contrary, hide it behind their facial expressions and demeanor. As children, we are not at all prepared to be alone with our thoughts. We are not given advice or expressed sympathy to somehow help us cope with internal loneliness and the mysteries of consciousness. At that time, I was thinking about creating an oral questionnaire on the topic “What does it mean to you to be yourself?” and began asking questions to a colleague who was well over fifty. He was skeptical, very surprised and amazed by my questions (one of them, as I remember, was about how he felt about having to put up with second-class things). He answered truthfully, perked up and suggested asking him some more questions.
Since then I have thought about different approaches. Reading John Updike's memoir Self-Awareness in the 1990s was a real eye-opener for me. Especially the last essay, “Always Be Yourself,” which for me was a brilliant answer to the question: “What does it mean to be yourself?” John Updike convinced me in his essay that a questionnaire was too limited a way to deal with this.
In addition, it occurred to me that in letters we tend to say more revealing things about ourselves than in conversation, and that letters, as a rule, are addressed to an abstract reader. I heard Will Self say on the radio that when we write, we show who we really are, and when we act as a reader, we identify ourselves with the author of what we write.
Therefore, I decided to ask the people I selected to write about themselves, minimally adhering to the proposed form. I had also planned to put the whole thing off until I had more time, but I did talk to some friends who were candidates for the job I had in mind (Simon, Rob and Amelia, as I recall). They agreed, and wanted to get down to business immediately. When the project finally started, it began to quickly gain momentum.
I chose people who spoke about themselves honestly and directly. In addition to the fact that I liked and trusted these people, they had a kind of naivety - a trait I knew well, especially on my father's side - because they believed it was reasonable to try to understand the nature of existence.
I sent out a sample essay and some recommendations to all participants. Many people found this very useful. I explained that I was interested in knowing what exactly goes on in their heads day after day, in the middle of the night, while communicating with other people, regardless of events and their achievements.
To my surprise, after some thought, most participants showed up with completed reports within three to six months without much pressure from me. The few (mostly women) who did not want to write about themselves explained this by saying that their personal experiences were too deep and painful. Some people interviewed (like Helen and Rob) accepted my offer to write about themselves on the condition that they would not touch on what hurt them most. One of the participants, Simon, approached the topic directly and openly, without any reservations. Others responded by reflecting on various aspects of their lives.
Participants talked about voices in their heads, efforts to make sense of what was happening and live in harmony with their memories. The desire to tell the truth about oneself is taboo in the minds of many people, despite the fact that it is a common human condition and may explain why people, whether project participants or readers, are captivated and inspired by it. People of all ages and walks of life usually understand what I mean as soon as I tell them the name of the project. Many people asked me why this idea had never occurred to anyone before.
There is no deception or fiction here, as happens in a work of art. Many participants engage in activities that do not involve a high degree of self-expression. This includes, for example, engineering and design positions, work in the medical field or in government agencies. Yet their essays display a creative enthusiasm that engages the imagination. Some essays are similar to autobiography, while others have nothing to do with it, but in both, the emphasis is on how people feel in the present moment. Many of the participants' revelations acknowledge the persistent and painful nature of childhood memories, but the book is not intended to relive childhood memories.
Compared to psychotherapy, there is no exchange of information with another person, nor is there a search for explanations or treatment (although some people describe a search for self from the beginning of their lives). There is also no filtering: project participants talk to themselves and for themselves. However, almost all respondents admitted that they considered this experience useful, and many even found it therapeutic and health-improving. Moreover, it seems to me that whatever approach the participants choose to answer my question, either approach will be correct and reasonable.
In some cases, life situations intervened, and then the participants said: “Stop me now, or I will change what I wrote endlessly.” Some people experienced such drastic changes in their lives during the survey that, according to their own statements, they would now write a completely different answer. But I felt, reading subsequent versions - some participants had more than one answer - that the spiritual manifestation of a person remains unchanged, even if the author himself does not agree with it.
They were ready to bare their souls. For example, Dominic writes that no one shares or understands his memories. Some are ambivalent about themselves, but many write about their feelings, acting as an outside observer. They create a good impression, and other people often have no idea how loosely they hold on to their place in the world around them.
All the attention of some turned out to be absorbed by the desire to adapt to other people. This seems to be the hardest thing for men to come to terms with. Some of these men, even if they are successful and highly effective at work, find themselves in a difficult situation due to fear of everyday social interactions. In turn, a typical theme for women is the tension between how they view themselves and how they believe others perceive them.
The book says very little about love and sex. Perhaps this requires the anonymity of the work of art. However, contrary to popular belief, it is not always and not only close relationships that cause us suffering. Instead, we will dwell on the minor manifestations of disrespect or misunderstanding from and about all those people we encounter every day.
After reading the essays written by the project participants, I look at the world in a new way. I feel more compassion for the authors: I liked them all before, but now I am aware of their insecurities. Now, when I walk down the street, it seems to me that I can hear the true voices of the people walking next to me. It's hard not to sympathize with a person when you hear a story told by them themselves. If we listened to each other in this way, we would become more aware of the vulnerabilities and insecurities that lie behind the good façade that most people put up.
I assume that every reader will compare himself with one of the characters in the book. After reading the excerpts, I had the impression of a commonality of views with all participants in the project, since I was able to discern their vulnerability and glimpse into their mysterious inner worlds. I have already discovered the benefits of this - for example, in resolving conflict situations at work.
I'm wondering if the idea of asking people what it means to be themselves might become popular. At times I imagine this could become a new craze that will be discussed on talk shows, during lunch breaks, or on the bus on the way home. In a more sober assessment of the situation, it seems to me that a direct interest in the inner world of other people can be useful for schools, prisons, and other public and social organizations.
Participants
I divided the entire essay into three parts: “Exposition”, “Comprehension” and “Reflection”. In the first part, the youngest participant is Nina, who is only fourteen years old. In addition to her, the first part includes essays by twenty-year-old Victoria, twenty-nine-year-old Amelia, thirty-three-year-old Stephen and thirty-nine-year-old Larry.
Between the first and second parts is a poem by Peter Phillips, “Swimming with Butterflies.”
In the second part, the participants who tried to comprehend everything that was happening were forty-year-old Mark, forty-seven-year-old Kate, forty-eight-year-old Simon, fifty-five-year-old Leo and Leah, and fifty-six-year-old Dominic. Dominic found close similarities between his essay and the section of the book "The Process of Becoming", written by Nick Duffell, about the students of a closed boarding school.
Between the second and third parts there is a poem by Danny Absey, “The Trial.”
In the third part, participants reflect on what is happening. They include Yuma, fifty-seven, Richard and Fran, husband and wife, aged fifty-nine, their peers Helen and Rob, Colin, sixty-three, and Julia, aged eighty-five. After Julia wrote about herself, one of her sons chatted with both of us about what it meant from his perspective. He plans to write his own essay on the topic someday.
From the very beginning, I was also interested in how people would interpret this issue from different perspectives - for example, from a philosophical, psychological and scientific point of view. Experts in these fields who heard about my idea to write such a book were immediately interested in the question posed, and I received feedback from Dr. Jonathan Miller, Liz McRae Shaw, and Professor Horace Barlow, which I included in my book.
Jonathan Miller wrote an introduction in which he compared the question I asked to the topic of philosopher Thomas Nagel's essay on consciousness. Professor Nagel invites readers to think about “what it means to be a bat.”
In the first epilogue, Liz McRae Shaw, a psychodynamic consultant, believes that the personal reflections and descriptions of emotional states contained in this book represent a completely new field, previously conquered by literature, case studies and “boring memoirs”.
She writes: “From early childhood, we diligently seek out stories, starting with stories about ourselves. This is how we try to make sense of who we really are.” Drawing a parallel with Shakespeare's theory of the Seven Ages of Man, Liz McRae Shaw opines that despite difficult childhoods, many participants found a way to regain mental health through relationships, music and work. She admits that she enjoyed reading about people who were similar to herself and yet completely different.
In the final epilogue, Professor Horace Barlow, neuroscientist and great-grandson of Charles Darwin, asks who benefits from self-reflection and argues that it is not so much the individual, but society as a whole. “René Descartes’ words, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ have misled us,” the professor writes. In his opinion, they gave introspection a dubious reputation and sentenced it to a four-hundred-year curse. Barlow explains that thinking about the question “What does it mean to be yourself?” led him to the conclusion that the answer cannot be found by a detailed examination of a single mind exploring its own essence. Instead, introspection must be viewed in the light of the fact that homo sapiens is an integral part of society. We ask other people why they did what they did and why they think what they think. Not only do we expect to hear reasonable answers when we ask these questions, but we also expect to be able to answer these questions intelligently ourselves when others ask them.
What does it mean to you to be yourself?
I asked this question to readers on the last page. When I tell people about my book idea or they read excerpts from it, a common reaction is to try to give an answer. For example, when twenty-year-old Victoria sent me her notes, she added: “It was a lot of fun to write, and many of my friends showed interest in this issue, so if you still need participants my age, I’m sure there will be plenty!”
My hesitation is that there is such a thing as “Always Be Yourself” (the title of a chapter from John Updike’s book), and one of my friends recently said that he has a strong sense of identity, but it is very fragile: “I see myself carrying the light that illuminates the forest, a little ahead of me and a little behind me, but the area behind is already irretrievably lost.”
Jenny Salaman Manson
Exercises to be yourself
Answer honestly - why is it difficult for you to be yourself? Because you are trying to please others! You are captive of other people's opinions. There are exercises on how to become yourself and not depend on the opinions of others. One of the most effective is to sometimes intentionally take other people out of their comfort zone. They probably won't like it. This is “weight-bearing exercise.” Intentionally inducing negative feelings towards yourself is as far from “trying to please” as it can be, which means it is a powerful exercise in the journey towards yourself.
Results
Thus, to be yourself means to follow your convictions, not to change your worldview in order to please other people, to please them. Honesty with yourself, regular self-knowledge, healthy reflection and self-analysis are the main tools for preserving yourself.
To be yourself, you need to know, understand and accept your characteristics, use both your strengths and weaknesses to your advantage, be able to compensate and mask your weaknesses, while not forgetting to constantly work on yourself and increase their strength.
It’s simple to be yourself: understand what I want to eat and drink, with whom and where I want to live, what I want to do, with whom I want to communicate; constantly remember this, choose and be responsible for your choice, set goals and achieve them. You have only one life, which neither your parents, nor the media, nor other people, nor stereotypes have the right to take away.
Start writing your blog
The more frank, the better. The first frank posts will be painful for you. You will worry about what people think of you and want to fit in. There will be a temptation to hide in the middle of humanity and not stick out. But with each new article and with each critical comment addressed to you, you will worry less and less about other people’s opinions about yourself, and louder and louder, you will hear your own voice from within. You will also begin to become yourself because you will gain enormous knowledge of yourself while writing articles.
Speak in public regularly
Terrible point, 13th. And yet this is the most effective way to be yourself. I’m not saying this because I run the oratory club Speaker Club every Saturday. I opened the Speakers Club because I believe in it. By constantly speaking in front of an audience, you will not only improve yourself thanks to feedback from listeners from the audience, but you will accept yourself for who you are. The next step is to teach other people to accept you for who you are. Vanity, haste, panic will all pass. Being yourself will become your default state, which will bring you a lot of happiness and will be so irresistible to captivate those around you.
PS Read for tomorrow: “5 effective exercises on how to become yourself.”
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