(from an interview with Tom Casciato, PBS Newshour, September 24, 2024)
Johnny Cash once said to me (incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time): “Nick, what you have got to do is figure out how to be yourself.”
I didn’t really know what he meant. (I thought, “Is that the best you could do, John?”) But, actually, now I do. Because, when you’re young, you’re trying to sort of cop an act. You are trying to be – always trying to be –somebody that you’re not. And you’ve got to sort of welcome in the things that you don’t really like about yourself, you know. But welcome it in!
Because if you can figure out how to be yourself, it makes things so much easier.
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Commentary: What does it mean to ‘welcome in’ the things we don’t like about ourselves? And how is that the key to becoming ourselves? Welcoming in the things we don’t like means to stop resisting the truth and simply feel the truth of how those things are already alive inside of us and happening, whether we like it or not. And if we can say something like, “I get really scared when someone gets close to me” or “I feel nauseous every time I’m supposed to speak in front of other people” rather than denying it, pushing it away, or feeling ashamed of it, then it’s possible to be all of who we are: the strong one, the weak one, the brave one, the scared one, the honest one, the lying one.
And if we can tolerate that all of it is true at different times then we can start to feel how perhaps one of those uncomfortable truths may be true right in this moment without running away or ‘copping an act’, trying to hide it from ourselves or others. We can be ourselves in a loving way, in an accepting way. And this acceptance allows us to be more accepting and loving toward others in their moments of weakness, defensiveness, anger, or dishonesty. We may not like it, but we can say, “yes, I recognize that part of you and I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it or rage against it, because I see and feel a very similar part is in me and I am not hating that part of me.”
It took Nick Lowe about 50 years to discover this deeply important secret for how to be himself: We don’t just get to pick the good things and deny the bad things. If we only love the good things and deny or hate the bad things, we are saying essentially that who we are is not tolerable and lovable—it’s not okay to be all of that. If we can stay open to, and welcome even the bad things as part of us (even if we want those truths to change or improve), we are saying that who we are is tolerable and lovable and we can be all of who we are. And as Lowe says, it makes things so much easier.
