Be The Elephant You Wish To See In The Room
Near the end of his life, Rabbi Zusya began to weep.
His students were amazed. “Rabbi, why are you scared of death? You’ve lived a great life. You’ve been as pious as Abraham, as devoted as Moses.”
Zusya replied, “When I stand before God, God will not ask me, ‘Zusya, why were you not Moses?’ God will ask, ‘Zusya, why were you not Zusya?’”
Your life, with all its limitations, is the only place you will ever find holiness. But what does it mean to be yourself? Too often, we approach authenticity with our thinking minds, fussing over labels, clinging to simplistic identities, explaining and re-explaining our positions.
But defining who you are isn’t the same as being who you are. You can explain yourself endlessly while still making yourself small, asking for permission, apologizing for existing.
Sometimes the next step isn’t to speak your truth more clearly. It’s to take up the amount of space your truth requires. That might mean letting a silence linger. Not smiling when you aren’t amused. Leaving when you want to. Allowing people to misunderstand you without trying to change their minds.
Be the elephant you wish to see in the room. Take up the actual dimensions of your life and let others rearrange their mental furniture around you. You don’t have to dominate the room. Just inhabit your breath, your body, your life, without adjusting yourself for some imagined audience.
The Buddha taught three things cannot remain hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Authenticity is less about pushing your light out into the world and more about no longer concealing it. No longer watching yourself from outside, adjusting the volume, checking the reaction. The magnificence of who you are is right there, unannounced, yet plain as day.
As always, if you’d like to be held through your own process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.
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