The Practical Free Spirit

I went to my city’s New Age bookstore today because I wanted to buy a calendar. (And I did! It has cool pictures of fractals.) I ended up buying myself a card because the text made me so happy. It says:

Be who you really are and go the whole way. -Lao Tzu”

I wanted to share a photo of my card, but then I started worrying about copyright issues, so instead I used the new Google+ photo tools (well, new to me, anyway) and made this photo to share.

I love this saying. It’s so fierce. Telling someone to be who they are isn’t enough. (And it’s also incredibly vague advice, especially if you don’t exactly know who you are.) But telling someone to go the whole way implies that there will be that moment of decision, when you could back down or mute yourself or hold yourself back or pretend to be someone you really just aren’t. And then, THEN, MY FRIEND, that’s when you have to go the whole way. That’s when you have to commit to who you are, who you’ve worked to become, who you want to be, and how this moment will be woven into your own personal narrative of self.

This is the essential truth of how to be a badass.

Going the whole way means stripping yourself of the things that don’t matter. It means being unwilling to apologize for who you are. It means celebrating the awesomeness that is you. It means letting yourself shine, and if you shine so bright some people have to look away, so be it.

Be passionate. Be silly. Be provocative. Be serious. Be warm. Be witty. Be quiet. Be no fun. Be the life of the party. Be honest. Tell lies to strangers about your adventurous past. Love what you love, whether that be writing or fly fishing or crafting or singing or traveling or golfing or playing board games or teaching or making or building or boating or gardening or talking or spinning around in the middle of a big field until you’re so dizzy you can’t stay standing.

Relish the freedom of being you. Try to avoid relinquishing that freedom, and if you lose it by accident, channel your inner fierceness to gain it back again.

Think about what going all the way might look like. Try it on for size.

Revel in it.