“This above all: To thine own self be true…”
Most people would take time to convince themselves that they are right in certain situations, but I actually took the time to prove that I may have been wrong. I pride myself on being as honest, trustworthy, self-reliant, and as straight-forward as possible in any situation, but of course, I am not perfect. The two things that I can’t stand are for someone to lie to me or to use me. All of this just made me think about why people do the things that they do.
Shakespeare wrote this famous quote in Hamlet: “This above all: To thine own self be true….”. It is a very recognizable quote, but most people don’t recognize the words that follow. They are just as important: “And it must follow, as the night the day, thou can not then be false to any man.”
”To thine own self be true” ...that’s really a deep statement. This is something that most of us have trouble with. There have been times when I have lost myself in someone else and became the person that they wanted me to be. I am guilty of allowing that person to define who I was at the time. Almost everyone has done it at one time or another. It’s really foolish, but on the journey to self discovery you get caught up in the lies. It’s part of growing up. By the time that you finally reach the age of adulthood, the lies have been engraved in us for such a long time that the journey to the truth becomes the road less traveled.
”To thine own self be true” ….the word “true” can cause a reaction in people that is less than favorable. Learning the truth about yourself is a complicated and bumpy road; particularly if there have been serious issues in your past. Introspect will lead to the truth and we all know that “the truth shall set us free”, but only if we are willing to accept the truth and allow it to become part of our healing process. Without truth, we are unable to be our true selves.
The truth offers more than freedom…it offers us the chance to love. I have learned that a lot of people shut down and will not allow others to love them. They also are incapable of offering love or truth to others. It makes perfect sense because if we don’t love ourselves, how can we demonstrate love to others and if we are not true to ourselves, how can we be true to others?
“And it must follow, as the night the day, thou can not then be false to any man” … this is simply what happens if we are true to ourselves. The inward action of being true to ourselves projects outward to others. This is the part that made me think. I doubted another person’s motives about being honest with me. I had to take time to look within. Almost everyone has been a situation while explaining their motives to someone, they were not trying to convince the other person, they were really trying to convince themselves of the story that they were telling. It was simply that we had the wrong motives and needed to look within and realize that we were just lying to ourselves about the situation.
Well, I did find that I was wrong. I was wrong for dealing with the person, I was wrong for trusting the person, and I was dead wrong for giving the person a second chance. In this case, my motives were erroneous. I wanted more from this person and tried to convince myself that they were capable of giving me everything that I had given to them. In fact, I was lying to myself. See, the only life that this person knows is a life filled with lies. So, I was the one that was wrong because I knew this the entire time. My motives were wrong because I was trying to transform dishonesty into the truth. In essence, I was fighting an uphill battle.
I have learned a valuable lesson though…”Above all: to thine own self be true.” As long as I remain true to myself and my faith, I will be fine.
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