Figuring out how to be yourself

Nick Lowe, interviewed on the PBS News Hour last night:

“Johnny Cash once said to me, incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time, ‘Nick, what you ought to do is figure out how to be yourself.’

“I didn’t really know what he meant. I thought, ‘Is that the best you can do, John?’ But actually, now I do. Because when you’re young, you’re trying to sort of cop an act, you’re 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.”

A related post
W.H. Auden on discovering who we are (With special guest Mr. Peabody) : Peter Drucker on where one belongs (With special guest Norman Spencer)

[My transcription. The News Hour transcript has “what you have got to do,” but I just don’t hear it. I welcome a correction.]