4. Be yourself, everyone else is already taken

I had a card in my office for years with this saying on the cover "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken."   Oscar Wilde penned the phrase.  I've seen professional football players propose the same sentiment writing "Be You" under their eyes.  It's similar to my life motto No Comparisons, but focuses purely on a call to unabashedly and unashamedly embrace the full uniqueness that is me, that is you. 

How incredible it is that we all have different faces, different voices, different finger prints.  There's not one person in the billions of people that have ever lived that has your unique look, personality, giftings.  God made each one of us totally unique.  That makes him wildly creative and we're made in His image, so we can be wildly creative in our own ways.  So why would we try and be like someone else?  Ah, because being like them makes you popular, rich, accepted.  Or so we think.  I want to be liked, to be accepted, valued, respected.  I've struggled with embracing various parts of who I am throughout my life, as noted in No Comparisons.  I have absolutely no problem accepting the uniqueness of the people I love, or the musicians I admire.  Would I want Sting's songwriting or the velvety voice of Tony Bennett to be any different?  Absolutely not.  So why do I struggle at times to apply the same principle to myself? 

It seems I'm not alone.  In her book "The top five regrets of the dying" Bronnie Ware writes "The number one regret older folks have in life when they're looking back from their death bed is that they didn't have the courage to live their lives, to be fully them, instead of what others thought or wanted them to be." 

As a person of faith, I believe this started way back in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve as part of the creation story in Genesis 1 in the Bible.  After the whole eating-the-fruit-disobeying God episode, Adam and Eve found fig leaves to cover their private parts, and hid from God.  When God found them, he asked about their new clothes.  "Who told you you were naked?" He was basically asking them "why are you ashamed of the way I created you?" "What other voices have you been listening to?" The invitation was to ignore other voices that say we should be ashamed of who we are, because the person we are is the person God created, made in His image, loved, valued, accepted.  And He invites us to rest in that.  It's a message I need to hear again and again. 

One of my heroes is Fred Rogers, from the PBS show 'Mister Roger's Neighborhood'.  He understood what was important- the inside stuff, not the outside stuff of our lives.  He treated kids with respect and taught them about love, friendship, individuality, imagination, honesty.  He embodied the "be yourself" philosophy with songs like "It's you I like."  Amazing role model.   When he died in 2003, his colleagues compiled a book of his quotes and musings on life: The world according to Mr. Rogers.   My daughter gave me a copy for Christmas.   He wrote, "As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has- or ever will have- something inside that is unique to all time.  It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing it's expression."

I still recall when my friend Knox told me "God said 'I need a Dean', so he made you."

To move the dial here, I try hanging out with people who appreciate and accept the real me.  The warts and all me.  The one with tremendous qualities and strengths and a few faults to boot.   

Here's another nugget from the wisdom of Mr. Rogers: "One of the mysteries is that as unlike as we are, one human being from another, we also share much in common.  Our lives begin the same way, by birth.   As we grow, we laugh and cry at many of the same things, and fear many of the same things.  At the end, we all leave the same way- by death.  Yet no two threads -- no two lives-- in that vast tapestry of existence have ever been, or ever will be, the same." 

The world needs me to be me.  The world needs you to be you.  Without apology. Without regret.  With abandon.  May we have the courage to be fully ourselves.