If you want to be yourself, change!  ~ Heinz von Foerster

“Just be yourself.”

We hear this at an early age. It’s supposed to encourage us, bolster our confidence. It implies people will like you if they know you, so you shouldn’t be fake – you should be real. Sounds simple: Be authentic; show the world the same “you” that’s on the inside; be genuine. Be. Yourself.

But sometimes, people expect me to be the way I was, to remain unchanged, to be the me they knew in the past. It’s easier for others to believe they understand me, predict my responses, and “know” me if they hold to the fiction that my perceptions, values, identities, and experiences are invariable, having fixed meaning and influence in my life.

But I’m always changing; I’m never static. I can’t be who I was for you because…that’s not me, now.

Here’s an idea I’ve come to value: Esse quam videri. It’s Latin, from Cicero’s essay “On Friendship.” English translation: “to be, rather than to seem (to be).”** So, to apply Cicero’s idea here means this: Being me isn’t being who I was; it’s being authentic-in-the-present.

I love conversations with my siblings and family, with high school peers, graduate school friends, and former students with whom I learned at TCU. We reminisce; we laugh at shared memories. But their memory of me isn’t the now-me. I’m not the person I was at 17, or even 57. Sure, parts of me are durable, even consistent with my past. But if you categorize me (personality tests, high school accomplishments and failures, “white-male-hetero-middle class” slot, American, professor, whatever), you’ll never know the now-me.

You know what changed me? Becoming a father. The death of mine. Changing careers. World travel. Cancer. Reading widely. Conversations with people wildly different from me. Living. Time. Who I was is not who I am.

And because I know I’ve changed, I relish those moments when I discover you have changed. “Wow! Tell me more!” is what you’ll hear when I meet up with people from my past. I’m always striving to replace certainty with curiosity, answers with questions, talking with listening. I’m constantly discovering facets of others I would never know if I wasn’t open to their growth and change…and expecting it.

If another decides I’ve changed too much, I shrug and remember, “Esse quam videri.” I can’t seem to be; I must be who I am, in this moment. Because Heinz taught me to be myself…and so, I embrace change.

NEXT BLOG: “How To Be Happy!!!”

** Esse quam videri is the State motto of the State of North Carolina (US). Television personality Stephen Colbert inverted the statement on his show The Colbert Report to Videri Quam Esse, meaning “to seem to be rather than to be.” It is also engraved across the faux hearth, above the video fireplace in his studio, under his portrait. It perfectly describes that TV show!