How To Be Yourself! Be True To Yourself! = Myths

There are countless meaningless cliches present in the English language. Just check out the average day time talk show for evidence.

None grate me as much as the abomination that is “Be Yourself”. People have forced this phrase upon me countless times, usually before job interviews. Let me ask you, who else am I meant to be bar myself? It is very unlikely that I can be Sven Goran Eriksson no matter how hard I try. Even If I did put a lot of effort into it, it would be nothing more than a pale imitation.

And the same applies when someone asks you to be yourself, only this time you are imitating who others think you are.

Job interviews are by their nature absurd and are rendered even more so when one of the interviewers attempts to settle your nerves by telling you to be yourself.

At my next job interview appearance I am going to go dressed like the fellow on the left.

Usually I respond by saying “Alright then, I’ll be my fucking self, first things first I’m gonna take this suit off and maybe keep the shirt on. That’s right baby, I’m stripping right down to my boxers and I’m gonna stare at my hairy legs for a good half hour. And by the way. The only reason why I’m even here is because I’m hoping to extend my ever growing collection of assault rifles with my salary. Illegal? No. You are thinking of grenade launchers. I have several of them back home too”.

Of course this approach will usually get you no where on the career ladder unless you are from Drogheda.

The truth is that when someone starts on you with this cliche they are asking you to completely water your personality down. To appear completely inoffensive even if you use “cunt” three times a sentence. They are asking you to ignore your roots and to present yourself as a generic, bland excuse for a human being who titters at jokes about teacakes.

The worst thing you could possibly do is be true to who you suspect you might be unless you are completely bankrupt on the personality stakes.

In the end of the day all we have is suspicion about who we really are . All we have is a name that we did not choose ourselves and a vague history as clues in the quest to assemble our character and to discover who we really are.

Usually its necessary to experiment with who you aren’t to find out some definitive answers by acting out of character. People do not tend to like this. It makes people feel uncomfortable and is often the cause of a dreaded “just be yourself” request. What that means in this context is to resort to being a predictable, clumsy lampoon who has no real depth of character.

Now you are probably wondering why I have never worked a day in my life.