Singer Demi Lovato dominated my playlist yesterday while I was running. Two of her songs illustrate two extremes when it comes to the way we see ourselves.
Her 2008 song “This is Me” is a celebration who who she’s come to be:
I’ve always been the kind of girl
That hid my face
So afraid to tell the world
What I’ve got to say
But I have this dream
Bright inside of me
I’m gonna let it show
It’s time to let you know
This is real, this is me
I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now
Gonna let the light shine on me
And now I’ve found who I am
There’s no way to hold it in
No more hiding who I want to be
This is me, yeah
Here’s Lovato comfortable with who she is and living fully into who she is.
But her 2020 song “I Love Me” is radically different:
Flipping through all of these magazines
Telling me who I’m supposed to be
Way too good at camouflage
Can’t see what I am
I just see what I’m not
I’m guilty ’bout everything that I eat
Voices in my head make up my entourage
‘Cause I’m a black belt when I’m beating up on myself
But I’m an expert at giving love to somebody else
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
I wonder when I love me is enough (yeah, yeah, yeah)
Here’s Lovato struggling with her identity and feeling pressure to be who others, and even who she herself, believes she should be, but finding nothing but self-hatred instead of self-love.
David Benner writes that these extremes set apart from the rest of creation (The Gift of Being Yourself). “In all of creation,” he writes, “identity is a challenge only for humans. A tulip knows what it is. It is never tempted by any false ways of being … So it is with dogs, rocks, trees, stars, amoebas, electrons and all other things.” But with us, with humans, it’s different. We spend our lives searching for identity, striving for authenticity in how we see ourselves and treat ourselves. Sometimes we’re comfortable with that identity and we’re ready to sing, “This is me!” Sometimes we’re not, and we’re “a black belt when I’m beating up on myself.”
Many of us, Benner writes, create a false self, one based on experiences from childhood and one rooted in how we think others want to see us and how we think we should see ourselves. The Christian journey is a journey toward abandoning these false notions of ourselves and growing into our true selves, the one we were created to be from the beginning: “The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own creation, the self we thought ourselves to be. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by Divine Love. This is the person we were destined from eternity to become—the I that is hidden in the “‘I AM.’”
This feels especially important during times of crisis like Covid-19. Many of us, if we are honest, are wrestling with identity right now because the coronavirus has impacted many of the things that give us a sense of identity or self-worth. Some of us have lost our jobs, and our careers are often a core part of how we identify ourselves. Some of us have lost health, and the status of our physical bodies is an important part of self. Some of us have lost loved ones, and family and friends are fundamental to our self-identity. Some of us have had our routines radically altered, and those routines helped provide a sense of self. Some of us are victims of or are witnessing inhuman acts of injustice and unkindness in this time, and that raises hard questions about self-identity.
Robert Mulholland (The Deeper Journey) writes that discovering and living as our true selves is the real invitation of Jesus. When Jesus says “If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves,” and, “Whoever loses their self for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:24-25), Jesus is inviting us to lay down those false selves and live into our true selves. Trappist Monk Thomas Merton (Seeds of Contemplation) wrote, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true self.”
Some of the important and deep work you can do during this crisis is the work of self-identification. Who are you? Not, who do others expect you to be? No, who do you expect yourself to be? But, who are you–really? Who is the person God has created and called you to be? If you had the courage to step into your true identity, what would that look like?
