It’s hard figuring out how to be.

What should be revealed? What should be concealed? It’s often a delicate balance between being prosocial and being authentic.

This space is almost always grey, rarely black and white. I suppose most things are that way. We shouldn’t spend too much time fighting with the nature of things.

Be your “self,” and there’s difficult consequences. Conform, and there are difficult consequences. Both options are flawed.

Here’s a myth: to conform means you’re not being a self. Rather, automatic conformity is where the danger is at, but making a conscious decision to go along and get along? There’s absolutely self in that.

The social tidal wave will never ask for your opinion. It’s coming. Try to defeat it, and you’ll quickly find out that you alone are not enough. Social tidal waves are a part of nature too. They aren’t going anywhere. We learn to live with them.

The best we can do is try to define ourselves and attempt to live in alignment with those definitions.

What does it mean to define oneself? There are many angles you can take, but a good place to start is to think about your responsibilities—to family, to friends, to your work, to yourself.

People tend to inherit their responsibilities from culture via a perceived authority of some sort. This isn’t all bad. We need a general model to get us started. However, it seems to me that, even as adults, people tend to reflexively absorb social prescriptions for who they are, what they’re about, and what they should do. This goes beyond coping with a social tidal wave. It’s called losing yourself.

We all should consider taking some time to define our responsibilities and write them down. What will emerge is a moral compass, a guide for action, defined by you. There’s so much confusion out there. Defining yourself through the lens of responsibility will help clear some things up.

The risks associated with losing yourself are substantial. One risk is you don’t know what matters to you. Another is you won’t have boundaries or a backbone. Another is you will blame others for your circumstances because you’ve absorbed all the social prescriptions, so everything seems like someone else’s fault. Another is all your relationships will have a lopsided power dynamic. You’ll feel owned.

Obviously, this type of losing yourself is different from the type Eminem championed. Interesting: similar words, different meaning.  

My poor attempt at humor aside, the stakes are high. Sure, there’s risks associated with defining self and living by it. Your codependents won’t like that. But we have to give ourselves a chance. So… define yourself, and then, most importantly, be yourself.