Gretchen Rubin wrote a post yesterday that follows up my post on what i want. Coincidence is a marvelous thing.
She asks whether you are an Alchemist or a Leopard.
Alchemists seek ways to change or re-direct our fundamental natures; we’re dissatisfied with ourselves; we’re often tempted to behave, and make choices, that don’t comport with who we really are.
Leopards don’t try to change their spots. They know who they are, and they don’t worry about everything they aren’t.
Oh, I am so an Alchemist. I think I came out of the womb thinking I should be someone else. And I certainly spent my childhood being overtly told that I should be someone else. I can’t remember ever feeling really comfortable just being myself and not believing that I had all sorts of things I really had to change. I’ve tried my whole life to be different. And I have never, ever been happy about it.
If I were going to be different, you’d think I would have changed by now. Am I trying to change habits or my fundamental nature?
Now, I don’t think I’m much different from most other people. I think that probably most of us have had, at least at times, pressure from others to be different from who we are. Particularly as children, there is tremendous pressure to fit in or to do things we don’t especially want to do. From playing the piano to using drugs, there are people telling us what we should or shouldn’t do.
I hope, however, that most of us grow out of that. We become comfortable with who we are and go on to a happy life. Perhaps that’s the difference between Alchemists and Leopards. Those of us who are Alchemists never develop that level of comfort.
So on the one hand, I could say that I need to accept who I am and stop trying to be someone else. But is that realistic either? I don’t think so (and neither does Gretchen). Accepting myself doesn’t mean I don’t try to be better and that has always been a stumbling block for me. I can’t accept myself, or at least not all of myself, because there are parts of myself that I really don’t like. But perhaps I really have to accept myself to be able to change.
For example, weight has been an issue almost forever. Accepting myself as I am seems impossible as I really hate the weight. But if I don’t accept myself, how do I accept that certain behaviors are not normal? Instead, I keep coming back to denial. I think that I can moderate my eating instead of accepting that I really have no control over certain behaviors – that’s why they call it a compulsion or an addiction. I can accept from an intellectual standpoint that I eat compulsively but I keep trying to behave as I if I don’t. This time, I think, I’ll behave differently. I’ll buy the chips, or whatever, and this time I will only eat one small serving.
This will take further chewing on, if you will pardon the pun. Accepting my fundamental nature is hard. Trying to change behaviors and habits is also hard. I may be, at least in part, unsuccessful at trying to change those behaviors because they’re part of my fundamental nature – but that doesn’t mean I want to continue them. Surely there is a balance, a comfortable medium, where I can live with being me and still be happier and healthier.
