Be Yourself, Part 1
Who the f*ck are you?
These are the first words I heard when I walked into Bravo Company’s offices for the first time. The guy’s name was Rob, and he was known for being pretty direct especially with newer guys. I had been instructed by my boss to go over there to coordinate some upcoming training, not to get into an altercation with another lieutenant. The words shocked me, but it wasn’t the first time I faced such blunt and rude curiosity manifesting itself in words. I sternly Rob in the face, then turned to the other lieutenant he was talking to, and asked for the person I came to see. I wasn’t going to pay him any mind; however, a brief exchange with the other guy gave Rob enough time to find his manners and introduce himself. I guess he realized the other strategy wasn’t going to get him very far. I was grateful for his change in attitude, and we were later able to become friends.
What allowed me to stand in the face of negativity and drive on instead of being distracted or shaken? I knew who I was and the reason for which I was there. This leads us to our questions today:
Who are you?
What are you here for?
I often like to think of life as a play in theatre. We all have our role to fulfill, and the cast is strongest when we are each playing our role to the best of our ability. It is much like a football team with many different positions that need to work in synchrony, and to the best of their ability, in order to win. Similarly, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 that we are all one body made up of many different parts. So, what happens when we don’t know what role we are here to play? When we don’t know our character or our purpose? Well, I think what happens is you end up with a Church and a society much like the one we have today – confused and under-performing.
So I ask you again, who are you?
When I went off to college, I was very intentional about deciding who I wanted to become. I actually made themes for every year of college and the first year’s theme was exactly that. As we’re going through school as kids, we often get asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A better question is, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” The what often will flow from the who, but the reverse is rarely true. When you start with what you want to be, you often try to force who you are to fit that mold. This is especially true if that ‘what’ is decided for you by somebody else.
Start with Elimination
I’ve always found it interesting that often times the best way to describe something or someone is by describing what they are NOT. This is primarily true as we always make assumptions about a thing or a person, so it is helpful to remove those from the other person’s mind before you start to paint the picture.
Elimination is a critical step in deciding who you are to become. By detailing all the things that you don’t want to be, you can effectively move closer and closer to a clear idea of who it is you do want to be. Sometimes, virtues can seem overwhelming, but considering their antithesis -vices – they are much easier to choose. Take this, for example – I don’t really feel like writing right now, but I know for a fact I don’t want to be seen as someone who commits to something and then abandons it. I know that I also don’t want to be weak or lazy, so therefore I commit my Saturday night to writing. Because I know I don’t want to be weak, dishonest, and slothful, I know that I must uphold my integrity and grow in discipline.
It took me some very hard realizations and life experiences to gather a list of things I didn’t want to be. For years, I would act entirely different depending on whether I was around my black or white family and friends. I really didn’t notice it for a long time. My mother would hound me all the time for the way I chose to dress like a hoodrat when I was out of school. When I was in middle school, it wasn’t uncommon to see me in my Catholic school uniform on Friday and a durag on Saturday. Growing up biracial, I always felt like I was too black for the white kids and too white for the black kids. I tried to be relevant to everybody by changing the way I behaved and dressed, based solely on who was around.
I think that we all go through periods of time where we change in personality, character, word choice, etc. when we are with certain people and/or in certain situations. This change in personality based on environment and present company is something I was exposed to a lot as I was growing up, and I markedly hated when others did it. I watched as some parents or teachers would act polite and happy around certain people whose opinions they valued, then immediately flip the switch the moment that person left. I despised seeing this fraudulence of character in others, yet here I was doing the exact same thing myself just to try and fit in.
Fortunately, I hit a point in doing so where I felt that nobody really liked me for me, regardless of which personality I was putting on that day. My unhealthy solution to my desire to belong led to an inauthentic version of me that nobody found appealing. It was a difficult realization, and I concluded that even I did not like who I pretended to be.
Lessons from the People’s Champ
One of my pivotal moments in this journey was watching a documentary about a famous athlete with my dad one Saturday afternoon. I remember watching with amazement as this man showed confidence in himself I had never seen before. “Dad, who is that man?” I asked in awe. “That is Muhammad Ali,” he answered. He began to tell me stories about how bad (Michael Jackson bad) Ali was ‘back in the day.’ We watched together as Ali talked trash to anyone and everyone. They showed highlights of him in the ring, and some of the challenges he faced in life outside of boxing. When I saw Muhammad Ali, I saw a man who knew who he was and what he was here to do – and I couldn’t get enough of it.
He reminded me of another childhood hero of mine, The Rock. My dad and I loved watching WWE wrestling when I was a kid. It would only be a peaceful viewing for about 5-10 minutes before I would start re-enacting the moves on my dad. As far as I was concerned, I fully morphed into the 6’5”, 260lb Brahma Bull himself. I also had a three-foot-tall stuffed gorilla from the movie “Tarzan” that received more Rock Bottoms and People’s Elbows than you could imagine.
As Dad and I watched the Ali documentary, his demeanor and cocky attitude called to mind all the things I had learned while watching the Rock growing up. The Rock was loud and proud about who he was. He had a lot of people who loved him and many who hated him, but he didn’t care. He was the self-proclaimed People’s Champ. And what really clicked for me that day was that neither of these men waited for fame, achievements, and endorsements from others before believing in themselves. Instead, those things followed from their own self-confidence and work ethic. I loved these two and wanted to be like them, but instead I was walking around faking it like the very same jabronies I had watched the Rock mock for years.
I committed, then, to being myself – whatever that might be – and to be it in full force. It took some time to develop, but eventually I was steadfast in my character and personality. Several years later (emphasis on years), you could find the same Nathan Crankfield wading in dark swamps in Florida during Ranger School as you would find on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I would act the same when leading Bible study as I would in front of family and friends back home. It wasn’t always perfect, and many different challenges and seasons of life would continue to throw me off and force me to search for my true self again; regardless though, I truly believe I had figured it out. I finally felt like I had mastered being me.
Now, I am very intentional about trying to be the man God has called me to be. I’ve grown and refined who I am over the years, but I am still unapologetically Nathan Crankfield. I dropped the impossible goal to mold who I was to fit different circumstances. I figured that I would follow the path set by The Rock and Ali: Be as great as you can be, with an unshakable confidence, and allow people to choose to accept it or not on their own time.
The People Pleaser
If you are going around trying to please everyone in your life, chances are you’re really pleasing nobody, to include yourself and God. I learned this lesson the hard way during my college years. I would go home during breaks from school and exhaust myself trying to visit all my family and friends multiple times in an eight-day period. At the end of the ‘break,’ I would have people who I had seen two or three times saying, “Man, I can’t believe you have to go back already. I didn’t really get to spend any time with you!”
I woke up early, stayed up late, skipped prayers and workouts to come see you and my reward is a complaint? Roger that. You know what they always say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, the opposite is also true. If it is broken, fix it. This way of operating during home visits was clearly broken, so it was time to do something about it.
The lesson here stood out loud and clear to me as I took these frustrations back to the Immaculate Conception chapel at Mount St. Mary’s University on a Sunday night. In my prayer time, I realized that I was more distant from God than I had been all semester, largely due to the fact that I hadn’t seriously prayed for about a week. I felt out of shape from a combination of a bad diet and lack of true exercise. I talked to the Father like a child, complaining how hard it was to please people and noticing that I, myself, wasn’t rested or happy either. It was in that moment that I hit another level in being true to myself. No longer could I allow others to dictate my schedule and my priorities based on their own frenzied feelings. At this point in my life, I knew my life had a purpose and a mission. I also knew that not everybody was going to be able to understand that.
Resources:
Below are some short videos for this week. In honor of the late Mamba (Kobe Bryant), I wanted to put some stuff in here for him. In the first, it’s a short video of an interview where he responds to criticism in his classic confident and calm demeanor.
The second video is a short tale of him telling his own story. What does your story sound like so far? How can you change this week so that the ending will be better than where it’s currently headed?
The last one is just a great 4-minute experience of Muhammad Ali’s confidence. What a savage.
This reflection is a part of Seeking Excellence's EXODUS 90 series, which took place in the months leading up to Easter.