My Authentic Self Does Not Like Ticks

Last week I told my cousin about our year in Tanzania infamously called the War of the Ticks. It was so nightmarish that every day I pulled 25 of them off my tiny dog and I stopped even trying with our big dog and they had infested my kitchen and we rarely let the dogs in the house anymore but the ticks kept crawling in under the door anyway. 

We paid the children money for the number of ticks they killed and so there were always cups of water sitting around with dead ticks drowned in them by my children. Drowning did not always work though, because ticks would go through the washing machine cycle and come out alive. I became an expert at beheading them with a fingernail. Sometimes the engorged ones would fall off the dogs and burst open which meant the live ticks would crawl through the dog blood and leave their tiny tracks on the floor.

When I found ticks in my daughter’s bed, we contemplated putting the dogs down. We had tried every tick prevention we could find, and until a friend of a friend sent us magical tick pills which killed them all in 24 hours, that year felt like some sort of creepy tick hell. 

As I described this to my cousin, I became increasingly aware that the words coming out of my mouth sounded really strange in my tick-free American house. And I stopped with that story because I figured that if I told her about the millipede invasion or the cockroach invasion or the ant invasions which were too numerous to count, well, I didn’t want her to have to try to come up with an appropriate response to all that. It might have been awkward.

I often read popular news stories because I am fascinated by deciphering worldview, and I keep coming across writers and speakers that tell me that in order to be happy, I need to be my authentic self. 

Not knowing what that really meant, I Googled What does it mean to be my authentic self? and I found, “We do what makes us happy, we follow our passions regardless of who we disappoint, or how it may be perceived by others.”

My authentic self is telling me to first correct the grammatical errors in that sentence, but I’m going to allow the writer’s words to stay authentically authentic. Because semicolons or not, it’s probably a pretty accurate definition. This is the motto we hear all the time, right? Follow your heart; you do you; make your own rules. 

So I wonder: Was I being my authentic self in Tanzania, with all those ticks and millipedes and cursed insects from Satan? They did not make me happy and I was not passionate about them, unless you argue that I was passionate about killing them. But I had a choice to be there and I kept choosing to stay. Was I some sort of masochist? 

The “be your authentic self” mantra tells me that if I keep digging deeper into myself to figure out what I really, truly want, happiness will meet me there. Is there any truth to this? 

Maybe. It speaks truth when it entreats me to recognize my own inherent value. Indeed, we do not put up with dehumanizing abuse for ourselves or the people around us, because we recognize that there is something uniquely exquisite about being human that demands respect. 

Disney won’t acknowledge that this truth comes straight from the Bible, but “Embrace what makes you different” wasn’t first taught by Dumbo. When the Bearded Lady sings, “I won’t let them break me down to dust/I know that there’s a place for us/For we are glorious,” we hear echoes of Psalm 139. 

“We follow our passions regardless of who we disappoint.” It’s true that living a life in pursuit of the praise of others will certainly end in unhappiness. My value is not wrapped up in what people think of me. I am irrevocably valuable simply because I am human. I believe that dignity comes from God, but I think it’s something that we all just know, inherently, at the core of our being. Which is why that truth has made its way even into children’s songs.

Yet. There must be another truth holding the other end of the rope taut, because if not, the “be authentic” mantra dissolves into a slimy puddle of selfishness. What happens when my authentic self conflicts with my husband’s? Or my children’s? My personal happiness is found most often in a clean, orderly house with a perfectly planned schedule. Do I have a right to demand this expectation of others, in order to live out my authentic self? Should I expect my family to capitulate 100% of the time, to get in line behind me because I have a right to live according to my rules? And what happens when I realize that my calling conflicts with a life infested with ticks?

My authentic self has the capability of making a lot of other people very unhappy. Is that really how I want to find happiness?

So we can agree on our innate value, but we diverge on the source of our happiness. Can I recognize my worth without caving to my every desire? Can I acknowledge my significance as a human yet know that I will not find happiness in living for myself? Can I release some of my own freedom in order that others can enjoy theirs?

Jesus once said, “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.” We could call it The Great Paradox. In giving up our life for others, it is there we find what life is really about. 

Was I being my authentic self by living in a tick-infested house? Goodness, no. But did I find happiness in that life? Absolutely, yes. It was in releasing my desires that I found True Life. I didn’t find happiness in following my passions regardless of who I disappointed. I found happiness in using my passions to serve others.

*tick picture from Pixabay, header picture by Gil (which is not a tick)