I gave a talk recently to high school seniors. When I sat down to think about what I could say that could be meaningful, have an impact, and inspire them - I tried to remember back to when I was their age, 16-18 years old. What were the most perplexing questions of my life at that time?
I realized that it seemed that everyone was asking me in one way or another "who are you?” They wanted me to tell them on the college entrance essays, recruiters wanted to know, so did my friends, and even my parents would ask me in their own round-about way. There were times when I even felt like God himself shrugged his shoulders and asked me "who are you?" And I would ask myself the follow up question of "who am I going to become?”
So I shared those thoughts with the audience that night and offered this advice; sometimes you can move toward figuring out who you are by discovering who you are NOT.
And I told them a story. When I was a sophomore in high school I went to a party and there were drugs there and a lot of stuff going on with guys and girls behind closed doors. I didn’t know anything about drugs and even less about girls, so I was very uncomfortable the entire night. As the night went on, I kept asking myself why I was there putting myself through these awkward couple of hours when I could have been at home lifting weights or shooting baskets outside under the spotlight in my dad’s driveway; trying to make myself better to pursue my athletic dreams. I wasn’t really that socially popular, but I was kind of “well known” because of my athletic success. So it felt like a lot of the people at the party wanted to see me do some drugs with them. I would always say no, but this one particular night, the pressure mounted abnormally high and even came from some of my teammates and friends, both guys and gals. "Just a little, just a hit, come on, be one of us." I waivered and thought "what could it hurt, just this once."
Nobody really knows how close I came that night because just in the nick of time, one of the older guys at the party (who was in college at the time and was actually a dealer of some of the drugs) interrupted the group that was pressuring me and he said "no man, leave him alone, it’s not his style."
That phrase changed my life that night. “No thanks, its not my style" has become a saving grace for me ever since.
I can’t tell you how many times I have used those exact words to deflect things being offered to me, and things that I didn’t want any part of that were going on around me, without telling all the people that they were wrong; or less than me; or stupid; or having them feel like I was judging them. And it has worked every time.
Drugs were not my style, still aren’t, and never have been. I am proud of that, proud I found my style in that area of life and at that time in my life.
We all have our style and we have to discover and decide what that is for each of us. Not doing those drugs is part of who I am and helped me in all I have become. And looking back, I realized that it all started with who I wasn’t. And that was a great and important starting place for me to begin to build upon and figure out who I was, even though I didn’t have all the answers at 17 years old.
Now I am 53, with an illness that doesn’t have a cure and I am still defining my style. Who I am and who I want to be as a husband and a father of 7, as a son and a brother and as a friend and colleague. I am a lot wiser now, at least I hope I am, but I still can feel the question being asked of me; "who are you?" And people don’t want me to tell them with my words, but rather they pay attention to my actions and my behavior. Every day I have a chance to define myself and answer that question in many areas of my life.
And I want the answers to be the ones that I have chosen, and I want them to be answers I am proud of.
And so I ask you, what your style?