Finally I Am Free To Be Me!

Finally I get to be me. Can you say the same about yourself?

It took reaching my older years, and I've noticed insights seem to arrive more easily now, to realize I'm no longer held hostage by other people's opinions. There's no reason to measure myself against the people who've done well in my line of work, or in any line of work for that matter. The freedom came late, but it came. Rather than drying up and fading quietly, I find myself putting out new shoots in directions I never expected. I won't pretend the opinions others have formed about me were easy to carry. Here's the part I keep returning to, though: I may not be the leading authority on something, but the people passing judgment usually aren't either.

A word of caution. Standing up for yourself can provoke real anger in the people around you, and the things others defend most fiercely are sometimes exactly the things worth challenging, because that's where the payoff lives. So who am I? Could I actually become the person I want to be if I simply released the grip of other people's old influences on me? Step aside and let me through. I keep turning up abilities and interests I'd filed away long ago as impossible. The question now is whether I can finally trust what my own mind tells me.

Picture a man putting on a suit cut to another man's measurements. My late husband fussed over the exact collar size and sleeve length of every shirt he owned. In my own way I've learned that I only enjoy a song performed a particular way; other renditions can genuinely bother me. Does that make me right, or wrong? Or have I simply figured out what music means to me?

A string of failures doesn't have to be the whole story of who you are. Ask yourself whose verdict you keep deferring to. Return to the one person you're obligated to know, which is you, and honor that. None of this is a license to run roughshod over everyone else to get your way. Still, you may disappoint a few people, mainly the ones who liked you better when they could steer you. Our tastes were never meant to match.

The role of peacemaker probably won't fit you anymore, the one who caves because somebody louder is accustomed to making the calls for the whole group. Think of the person who always ends up choosing the restaurant, which then quietly dictates what everyone else gets to eat. Yes, going along keeps the drama low. But consider what that costs you over time.

I'm coming into sharper focus the older I get, lumps, bumps and all, even the parts that don't flatter me or that get in the way of what they, not I, had in mind. So who am I, really? And are there talents and curiosities still sitting undiscovered in me, ones I could use to build a world of my own?