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The Awesome Power to Be Ourselves

    One afternoon, when I was a little girl, the teacher announced that there would be no school the next day because the old man who lived in the turreted mansion had died. I was puzzled. Many people died. Why close the school for this man?

    I asked Stuart, who was in the eighth grade and usually knew everything. "He owned the factory, didn't he?" Stuart said, amazed at my ignorance. "That's about as powerful as you can get around here."

    Isn't this how many of us think of power—the richest man in town, the man who can control others?

    But power has many guises. My father was a kind and gentle country minister in Nova Scotia, he had neither money nor fame. No one, I am sure, was ever afraid of him. When he was 64 years old, he received a letter from a church official in one of his old parishes. "We hear that you will soon be retiring," the man wrote. "Would you come and settle here? We feel that we'd be a better community and better neighbors for having a man whose life is so genuine living among us."

    Imagine changing a community just by being oneself. That is power.

    I think of a homely little man in Athens more than 2 000 years ago who died because he asked dangerous questions. His audiences were very small; yet there is no literate person in the world today who has not heard of Socrates. I think of St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up a pampered life to live in poverty while comforting the poor and the sick, and of Mohandas Gandhi, who freed his people from the most powerful empire of his time, without any force except what he called "truth force."

    What do these individuals have in common? They all spoke and acted as themselves, resolutely standing up for what they believed. They have had the inner purity of people true to their ideals. They have been "authentic."

    Many critics nowadays decry the "be yourself" philosophy as leading to selfishness. But authenticity doesn't do this. It proceeds from the center of a person's life, but is not self-centered. It sets a glowing example for others and moves them to action. This is its uncanny power, and it is available to all of us.

    The concept that we ought to know and be ourselves goes back to the first time a human wondered, "Who am I?" Socrates taught that to "know thyself" is the basis of all knowledge; Shakespeare wrote, "To thine own self be true...thou canst not then be false to any man." Like all the great ideas, the concept rises and falls with the tides of history.

    In the 1960s, after a period of conformity in America, young people began again to search for identity. They struggled against authority and insisted on obeying their own consciences. That crusade may be over, but the search for the self goes on. Always, we seem to be asking, "How can I make my life count for something?"

    Authenticity makes each person's life count be restoring power to the individual. To be oneself is a natural, human and universal power which brings with it a cornucopia of blessings. What are the attributes of an authentic person?

    Today, best-sellers are written on the powers of assertiveness and manipulation. But in our society the assertive manipulators often do not win. Many of our institutions are headed by authentic people, who rise because others are drawn to them, admire them, imitate their example, here is an upright business leader who has risen to the top over others who are more clever. Why? His associates might say he is "fairer," or that he has a longer "vision," but it is more than that. The man possesses an inner strength; he radiates confidence. Instinctively honest, he never weakens his moral authority by a dishonest compromise. This honesty is one prime attribute of authentic people. Others include:

    A sense of direction. Authentic people recognize the direction in which their lives are meant to go. When Albert Schweitzer, the great missionary doctor, was a boy, a friend proposed that they go into the hills and kill birds. Albert was reluctant, but afraid of being laughed at, he went along. They arrived at a tree in which a flock of birds was singing; the boys put stones in their catapults. Then the church bells began to ring, mingling music with the birdsong. For Albert, it was a voice from heaven. He shooed the birds away and went home, disregarding what his friends thought about him. From that day on, reverence for life was more important to him than the fear of being laughed at. His priorities were clear.

    Self-generated energy. Fatigue is a common symptom of people who suppress what is truly themselves. They are not really tired but tired of. Dr. Josephine A. Jackson, in an early primer of psychotherapy, Outwitting Our Nerves, describes patients so fatigued that they could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Summing them up she said, "The sense of loss of muscular power was really a sense of loss of power on the part of the soul!"

    We, too, are often tired, not from "the loss of muscular power" but from the effort not to be ourselves. We are actors trying to impress other people. That's hard work.

    By contrast, the authentic person does not dissipate energy in contradictions. His self-honesty reduces internal conflicts, and he feels alive, exhilarated. His energy is turned on by doing what matters to him. He does not dissipate energy on conflicts or deceits.

   The power of example. The authentic person also mobilizes the energies of others, by inspiring them. Just by being himself, he makes a statement about what is to be done.

    During the French occupation of the Saar in the 1920s, when German feelings were running high against reported excesses by black colonial troops, Roland Hayes, the great black singer, faced a noisy and hostile audience in Berlin. For almost ten minutes, he stood quietly but resolutely by the piano, waiting for the hissing to cease. Then he signaled his accompanist and began to sing softly Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh" ("Thor Art Peace"). With the first notes of the song, a silence fell in the angry crowd. As Hayes continued to sing, his artistry transcended the hostility and a profound communion between the singer and audience took place.

    The power of self-love. A person who respects and values himself is much more likely to be able to do the same for others. When we are not sure who we are, we are uneasy. We try to find out what the other person would like us to say before we speak, would like us to do before we act. When we are insecure, our relationship to others is governed not by what they need but by our needs. Authentic people, on the other hand, are there, not only for themselves but for others. No energies are wasted in protecting a shaky ego.

    The power of the spirit. No one can summon spiritual power just by wanting to. But it seems to come often to those most centered on the deep self where discovery begins. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., marching between the clubs and baying dogs to Selma, Ala., and electrifying a huge audience in the Washington Mall. It was impossible to be with him for any length of time without realizing that the spirit was the spring from which he took his life's responses. Few of us can be great leaders, but any person who is true to himself enhances his access to this power of the spirit.

   STRIVING for authenticity is not easy. This is a lifetime endeavor and nobody ever makes it all the way. It is a becoming rather than an ending, something we learn day by day. Here are some ways to begin.

    Pay attention to what is going on in your life, inwardly and outwardly. Keep a journal to see how you change over time and to discover what muffled longings are being expressed. Few of us are so monolithic that we don't harbor conflicts within ourselves. Admit them. Listen to the dialogue within and record it in your journal, as May Sarton wrote in World of Light, "Everything free from falsehood is strength."

    Accept the idea that nothing is wrong with being different from other people. The truth is, all of us are different, and we are meant to be. "Each one of us," wrote philosopher Paul Weiss, "is a unique being confronting the rest of the world in a unique fashion." Seek out your deepest convictions and stand by them, live by them.

    Spend time with yourself. Solitude is at the heart of self-knowledge, because it is when we are alone that we learn to distinguish between the false and the true, the trivial and the important. "Solitude," said Nietzche, "makes us tougher toward ourselves and tender toward others."

    As with the splitting of the atom, the opening of the self gives us access to a hidden power. Authenticity is a sensitizing and blessed power. It comes with feeling at home with oneself, and therefore, being at home in the universe. It is the greatest power in the world — the power to be ourselves.

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