When we are ourselves, we free others to be themselves.
Everyone is scared. Everyone is putting on appearances. We present ourselves as who we think others want us to be, in order to be loved. But that is love bought with a lie, and we know it. Any love gotten this way - by successfully presenting a false front - never sits well in our gut because we know it is not real. That love was only for our performance, not for the person performing. So we spend all this time putting on a show, trying to be loved, and yet we're still left feeling empty.
It is shocking to see someone be themselves ... a magical thing happens. Seeing someone else be in their truth suddenly makes you realize that you can be in your truth, too.
But something interesting happens when we drop the game. When we stop playing.
Something huge happens when we drop everything and simply say, "Hey, guess what? Here's the real me. Behind all this fake shit I've been hiding behind." It frees others.
It is shocking to see someone be themselves because unfiltered truth-of-self is such a direct affront to the culture of false-performance in which we all live. It challenges the narrative of: "I have to keep up appearances because everyone else is keeping up appearances." And then a magical thing happens. Seeing someone else be in their truth suddenly makes you realize that you can be in your truth, too.
None of this is easy, mind you. Sometimes being in your truth is utterly terrifying ... which is why so few people do it.
But what seeing someone in their truth does is make you realize that being in your own truth is possible. Not easy, but possible.
And nothing frees you like a sense of possibility. It gives you a picture of yourself you never had before. You can suddenly see yourself outside of the "performance" game. All because you witnessed someone else having the strength - or the willingness - to step outside of society's rules, the rules that say the Self is a thing best hidden, not something that should be held up for all to see.
So in whatever small ways you can, try more and more each day, little by little, to be more of who you are, and less of who you are not. Let go of masks, and appearances, and performance, and falsity. Let in the light shine in and your truth shine out. Not only will you be freer, but you never know who else you might be helping to free as well.
OK, good enough for now,
~ Quest Barely, all!
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Kemson Cooper is the creator of QuestBarely.com, a site about using the body as a path to explore the Self. He is also the author / artist of "Love Yourself ~ A Body of Work" (perhaps the world's first naked self-empowerment book