In the movie “Good Will Hunting” (starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Robin Williams) there is a well-known scene that takes place in a bar in Boston frequented by Harvard students. Will Hunting (Damon) and his friends, who don’t go to Harvard, go to this bar and Chuckie (Affleck) decides to approach a couple of women that are having some drinks.
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Chuckie initiates conversation with the women, pretending to be a Harvard student. It’s clear from their reactions that they don’t believe it at all, but they play along until another guy names Clark decides he’s not going to play that game!
Clark approaches Chuckie and starts asking questions designed to expose Chuckie’s deception. The funny thing is as you watch it, you may actually feel sympathetic to Chuckie (who did lie) and more angry at Clark who comes off as an arrogant, snotty jerk.
Then in the pivotal moment of the scene, Will comes in, like a good friend, and shoots downs Clark’s pretentiousness and exposes Clark as well.
You can watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZ0Y4rvz6E
Clark approaches Chuckie and starts asking questions designed to expose Chuckie’s deception. The funny thing is as you watch it, you may actually feel sympathetic to Chuckie (who did lie) and more angry at Clark who comes off as an arrogant, snotty jerk.
Then in the pivotal moment of the scene, Will comes in, like a good friend, and shoots downs Clark’s pretentiousness and exposes Clark as well.
You can watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZ0Y4rvz6E
In other words, if she was just her true self, I think her impact would have been more powerful and long lasting.
The Poser
When I was growing up one of the worst things to be called was a “poser.” Someone who pretended to be something s/he wasn’t. No one wants to be a poser…and we don’t like it when someone else is, either.
Black or White?
You may have heard the story recently of Rachel Dolezal, a leader of an NAACP chapter in Washington who was forced to resign amid reports that she is not actually African-American, despite her claims to the contrary.
Before I go further I want to be clear that this post is NOT about the NAACP, the state of racial relations in America or about any type of political agenda.
Rather this is about taking a look inside all of us and asking this question:
Why would someone pretend to be something s/he’s not?
In reading about Ms. Dolezal’s situation it seems to me that somewhere in her journey she decided that she believed that if she continued to be who she was, that it would inhibit her success in the things that she was passionate about. So, along the way, she made the decision to jettison portions of her “real self” and assumed the identity of someone else … in other words, she became a “poser.”
Here’s the irony-while I am no scholar on racial relations, so I could be off base, but I have to think that if she was open about being a white woman who cared deeply about the African-American community and wanted to be a part of the community, that she would have more impact over the long run, than as a white woman pretending to be black, who was eventually forced to resign as head of the NAACP chapter.
In other words, if she was just her true self, I think her impact would have been more powerful and long lasting.
The same is true for you and me.
Before I pile on Ms. Dolezal the truth is I’ve played the “poser” tons of times myself. No, I haven’t pretended to be another race (I can’t hide it!) but I have definitely made decisions to hide my true self, deny certain things that are true to me and tried to play the game by everyone else’s rules so that I could “succeed.”
You know how that all went, don’t you?
Pretending to be something I wasn’t, because that is what I felt I needed to do to succeed only led to failure. And whatever successes I did have seemed to be short-lived, or not meaningful, because they weren’t “me.”
So I’ll ask you…where are you “posing” today? What do you need to get out from behind and what do you need to allow of your true self to come through?
