[2023-04-16] Who we are
I spent an enriching day with my daughter while my husband convalesced at home with the head cold that's made its way through our household.
This morning, Mel and I walked over to a local cafe, where we were able to consume our drinks on a patio: mine was a decaf latté; hers was a strawberry iced tea. We split a coconut-mango scone.
When we spend time together, we talk almost constantly, sliding effortlessly from one subject to another. Among the topics of conversation today was the difficulty many of us face, particularly girls and women, in being who we are as opposed to who we are expected to be. I shared the story of a friend whom I described as spunky. This friend would do all sorts of things to break the tension at work and to help her staff see that she was with them. On one occasion, for example, she walked down the hall of her office wearing oversized animal slippers on her feet. I imagine that her staff loved this. In my experience, people will work hard for leaders who show they care about their employees, their well-being and their mental health. Nevertheless, my friend's gesture might have raised the eyebrows of her superiors.
Many of us have no doubt experienced conflict when who we are—in our own mind and according to our own values—differs from what others expect or want from us. It can be disconcerting when this happens. When I was a child, I often heard, "for someone who's supposed to be so smart, you're awfully dumb." I hated that. It made me feel that I was never allowed to make a mistake, never allowed to learn something, and—despite my good grades—not really smart at all.
Such conflicts can occur in all spheres of our lives. Yesterday, for example, I participated in a webinar about the power of food and recipes to preserve memories. The woman leading the workshop described having grown up in Italy, where it was common for girls to be brought up in the kitchen, learning to cook from their mothers and grandmothers. In her case, her grandmother was a seamstress, not a cook. And while her mother was a good cook, she had a full-time job outside the home. The workshop leader said she felt judged about what she was supposed to know about cooking. But then she went off to school and started to cook not just for herself but also for her friends. "When I was talking to my friends while cooking," she told us, "I got to be who I was rather than who I was expected to be."
On our sunny patio this morning, my daughter shared the stories of two lead singers who had developed on-stage personas that were quite different from their real selves: Andy Bell of Erasure, and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys. The difference between the two, she said, is that Andy appears to relish performing while Alex is a reluctant frontman. In Mel's view, when the persona we create is of our choosing, we experience less conflict than when the persona is something we adopt to meet the expectations of others (including the expectations of being a rock star).
During my career, I always thought of myself as a chameleon, able to change my colours to suit the environment or the people around me. But perhaps, like Bell, because that was my choice as opposed to something I was told to change, it rarely caused inner turmoil.
Mel and I agreed that as we got older, improved our sense of self, established boundaries and chose jobs that were more aligned with our personalities, we faced fewer internal conflicts.
This afternoon, Mel and I ran errands, including stopping at a local bakery for a sunflower-flax sourdough bread (still warm) and a cinnamon roll. We took our sweet treat to a park to enjoy. What a perfect day to be exactly who we are—nothing more, nothing less.
