The Assignment

If you could be anyone who would you be?

That was the assignment. I was in Mr. Dow’s 5^thgrade class and that was the assignment. And it was a very troubling assignment for me.

I had a secret and I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. I wanted to be a doctor. I don’t even really know why I knew this. From adulthood I can remember the assignment and the dilemma, but I cannot remember when or how I had decided that I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know of any doctors in my family. I didn’t know of any friends who wanted to be doctors. It wasn’t like I had watched doctor shows and idolized them. I just knew that within my heart that is what I wanted to be.

It seemed bold and maybe prideful to me. I was afraid that people might laugh at me. It meant so much to me that I couldn’t bear to have people laugh at me about it. I was in a dilemma. I was raised to always tell the truth. The truth was I wanted to be a doctor. But I didn’t want to put it on paper. So, I did what a mature 5^thgrader might do. I didn’t do the assignment.

Mr. Dow wasn’t happy. There were a couple of us at the table where he sat the “advanced” kids. We were the ones that had the harder assignments. He pushed us to turn in our assignment. I continued to procrastinate, hoping that my dilemma would just “go away.” It didn’t. Mr. Dow wouldn’t accept just letting me not turn it in.

Finally, reluctantly I wrote it and turned it in. I don’t remember what I wrote but I wrote the truth and revealed my deepest secret. It was really scary.

My friends started talking about how they answered the assignment. One told me that he said he wanted to be “Abraham Lincoln.” Another was “George Washington.” The others told similar historic figures. My heart sank as I realized that I had misunderstood the assignment. 

If you could be anyone who would you be? The assignment was not what do you want to be.

Abraham Lincoln would have been a far safer answer. And yet I had revealed my deepest secret. Graciously Mr. Dow did not reveal my secret. I didn’t tell my friends. I was able to continue with my secret dream.

Why did this upset me so much? 

First, I heard the assignment wrong because of my anxiety. It seems that we often worry so much about things that are not real. 

I read a book where every day for a year the author challenged herself to do something that scared her. It brought about tremendous growth for her. One of the things that she did during that year was to go meet with her ex-boyfriends to find out what they really had thought of her.^[1]She had huge anxieties. But in doing this she discovered that most of what she had worried about was never real. Her anxieties had driven her to assume the worst. She was not able to see, believe, or know the truth until she had been bold enough to ask.

That is a big lesson. It is hard to know the real truth about ourselves. We fly between the extremes of a sort of “Walter Mitty” over glorification to a false self-denigration. Neither are the truth. We all have some pretty cool and pretty average (and some pretty crummy) things about us.

It is important that we try to live in reality and not let our anxieties drive us to neurotic behavior. For me, as a 5^thgrader, my anxieties were to the point where I would have let them drive me to a failing grade for not doing the assignment. If I could have seen through the fog of my anxieties I might have actually read and listened and done the assignment. Maybe I would have written a very nice and safe essay on wanting to be Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon. 

Is there more to learn from this story? I think so. 

Honestly – I don’t know why I was so anxious for anyone to know. Perhaps it comes from being the youngest of 6 children? Perhaps it came from being afraid to actually dream and tell the truth about who I was and what was important to me? Oddly – I have no idea now what I was so afraid of. My family and friends would have been quite happy to indulge me in my dream. They probably would have been happy for me and proud of me. It seems strange now that I would keep it so private.

This blog has been an odd experience for the introvert that I truly am. 

I have found power in being able to write in secrecy. I write a lot and then store it away. I don’t worry about whether I will ever post it or not. There will be time later to decide that. Writing in this way is immensely liberating. I can be myself. I can be honest. I can say what is on my mind.  

If only the 5^thgrade me would have thought of this. I could have written a full essay on my hopes and dreams. I could have worked through my thoughts about someday going to medical school and becoming a doctor. I could have fully explored what I was thinking and why. I could have better understood myself. I could have tested out my thinking secretly at first. I could write it down but keep it private. Having done this I would then have understood enough about myself so that I could then safely explain it to others. I could have been bold enough to know myself and then be open about what was important to me.

It may sound silly but the Disney song, “Let It Go”^[2]has a strong appeal. “Let it go, Let it go, Can’t hold it back anymore…” “I don’t care what they’re going to say…”  Even though we may not admit it, I think many of us feel the pull of this song when we hear it. We spend a lot of time hiding. Shielding. Protecting ourselves. Maybe sometimes we should really, “Let it go.”

So, lesson number one: Live in the truth not what you worry people might think about you. For me I know that it is ok, important and good to be honest with myself. I should look objectively. It is ok to be average – excellent in some ways – and not so good in others. I don’t have to be good at everything. And I had better not let anxieties or worries about what people might think about me drive my life. 

Lesson number two then is this: It is good to have dreams and deep thoughts and feelings. I do not have to be afraid of them. I do not have to be afraid to be myself. We all may have thoughts and dreams and ideas inside of us that we keep safely and secretly hidden. I am not saying that you or I have to reveal anything and everything to the world. I have things buried on my computer that I may never post. But there may be real value from time to time to “Let it go.”

It has amazed me how people have responded to this blog. By putting myself out there many have told me that I have helped them. Some tell me I hit points that make them better know who they are or what is going on in their life. That is pretty cool. That makes me really happy.

Who did I want to be? I wanted to be a doctor. And to be honest I wanted that more than I would have wanted to be Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or Neil Armstrong (although it would have been really really cool to be Neil Armstrong!). 

There. I said it. I “Let it Go.” That is who I was as a 5^thgrader. I was a nerdy little boy who dreamed of being smart and studying hard and having people come to me for answers as their doctor. 

It still is easy for me to want to hide a lot. But in this blog I have let you see a little bit of who I am now.

Who are you?

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^[1]https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061875014/my-year-with-eleanor/

^[2]https://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/f/frozenlyrics/letitgolyrics.html