I recommend listening to this song while reading this post.
A good friend of mine recently brought up the idea of being your ‘best self’. I’ve sort of been hooked on that concept in the days since.
What is our best self?
The idea inherently suggests that we have a self that we do not consider our best. A self that perhaps we are not proud of, or maybe one that we are not as comfortable with. Why does this self make us uncomfortable? Is it an issue of perception and subsequent judgment? Is it this judgment that we are uncomfortable with or even fear? Is it the specific people who are judging? While thinking about it, it is probably important to recognize that the initial judgment is our own, for we judge which self we are or were at the time--our best, or the person who is beneath that.
So this ‘best self’ of mine. Who is he? Is he the one that is confident? Is he the one that is outgoing? Is he the funny one? The one that other people like to be around? The winner? The one who sounds smart, or says the right things at the right time? The one who knows when to say nothing and listen? If I manage to embody any of these qualities, does that put me at my best?
I was at a cocktail party recently and while at a table seemingly involved in conversation with others, I couldn’t take my eyes off a man in the room. He walked around. That’s what he did. He walked around, never stopping, fearful that someone might notice that he was with no one. He shifted his hands from his pockets to his side and back to his pockets, in a subconscious routine. He walked with an over-exaggerated purpose, and I watched. I watched because I knew exactly what he was feeling, as I have been there countless times. So I sat at my table occasionally dropping a one-liner to appear engaged, but I couldn’t stop watching this man, alone in a crowded room.
Eventually, I lost track of him.
But I looked for him still, hoping that he had found his niche, but knowing that he most likely excused himself from the party.
It all reminded me of a novel I read, in which the author wrote of the evolution of communication. She divided the growth into ages. One she called “The Age of silence”. In it, she spoke of moments like this, the moments in which we feel uncomfortable. She called upon the reader to think about their hands in those situations and how we never know what to do with them, how they feel as though they are foreign to us. She suggested that this was our hands remembering an age before spoken communication. How they are longing to communicate, but we simply don’t know how to use this tool or perform this act anymore. We have evolved past it, but we still occasionally get caught between that and, well, words.
Maybe we evolved too far, or maybe we just think too much. We want to find the right words at the right time. We want to be our best self.
Again, who is my best self?
He is the guy who is honest. He gets uncomfortable at times, but he recognizes it, and he recognizes that others do too. He doesn’t second guess himself because he doesn’t need to if he is genuine and authentic, and he knows that if he is being either of these things, then he is being himself. That is the best self. The honest one.
“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - and you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body - it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. ”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
A good friend of mine recently brought up the idea of being your ‘best self’. I’ve sort of been hooked on that concept in the days since.
What is our best self?
The idea inherently suggests that we have a self that we do not consider our best. A self that perhaps we are not proud of, or maybe one that we are not as comfortable with. Why does this self make us uncomfortable? Is it an issue of perception and subsequent judgment? Is it this judgment that we are uncomfortable with or even fear? Is it the specific people who are judging? While thinking about it, it is probably important to recognize that the initial judgment is our own, for we judge which self we are or were at the time--our best, or the person who is beneath that.
So this ‘best self’ of mine. Who is he? Is he the one that is confident? Is he the one that is outgoing? Is he the funny one? The one that other people like to be around? The winner? The one who sounds smart, or says the right things at the right time? The one who knows when to say nothing and listen? If I manage to embody any of these qualities, does that put me at my best?
I was at a cocktail party recently and while at a table seemingly involved in conversation with others, I couldn’t take my eyes off a man in the room. He walked around. That’s what he did. He walked around, never stopping, fearful that someone might notice that he was with no one. He shifted his hands from his pockets to his side and back to his pockets, in a subconscious routine. He walked with an over-exaggerated purpose, and I watched. I watched because I knew exactly what he was feeling, as I have been there countless times. So I sat at my table occasionally dropping a one-liner to appear engaged, but I couldn’t stop watching this man, alone in a crowded room.
Eventually, I lost track of him.
But I looked for him still, hoping that he had found his niche, but knowing that he most likely excused himself from the party.
It all reminded me of a novel I read, in which the author wrote of the evolution of communication. She divided the growth into ages. One she called “The Age of silence”. In it, she spoke of moments like this, the moments in which we feel uncomfortable. She called upon the reader to think about their hands in those situations and how we never know what to do with them, how they feel as though they are foreign to us. She suggested that this was our hands remembering an age before spoken communication. How they are longing to communicate, but we simply don’t know how to use this tool or perform this act anymore. We have evolved past it, but we still occasionally get caught between that and, well, words.
Maybe we evolved too far, or maybe we just think too much. We want to find the right words at the right time. We want to be our best self.
Again, who is my best self?
He is the guy who is honest. He gets uncomfortable at times, but he recognizes it, and he recognizes that others do too. He doesn’t second guess himself because he doesn’t need to if he is genuine and authentic, and he knows that if he is being either of these things, then he is being himself. That is the best self. The honest one.
“If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - and you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body - it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. ”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
wow.
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