making what we think, say and do the same thing

​I was riding in the car with my 12 year old Ian yesterday. The boy was rambling on and on about this, that and the other. At one point, I remember thinking, this boy really doesn't care what he says. If he thinks it he's going to say it. And if it involves any doing, you can be sure he's going to DO it.

Ian is a happy kid. Maybe the happiest I personally know.

I told my buddy Solomon at one of our Olive Garden chats early in the year, this is the year I work on being more authentic. Looking back, I think what I was really saying was, I'm tired of the things I think and the things I say and the things I do not always matching up. It's exhausting. And really - it's generally a really unhappy place to live.

I think about Ian - and a lot of kids really - and how they are often seemingly more happy than adults. I wonder if it's because they aren't running around in life burdened by the wrestling match that happens when the things we think and say and do don't agree with one another.

Ian hasn't reached a point in life where he feels a need to conform to any societal ideas of what Ian should be - he just runs around freely being Ian.

Ian's never been harshly punished in his life, so he has never decided it's easier to just lie about what he's doing than being an open book.

Ian has always had someone wanting to hear what he's thinking, without control and without criticism, so he just goes right on thinking out loud.

I mean, the reality is, for the most part - Ian hasn't discovered a down side to being Ian. What a gift, right - when we don't believe there's any down side to being who we are?

I'm afraid too often, as we grow from kids to adults, we start to imagine there's a down side to being who we are. So we start living as someone we're not to prop up that down side.

We start saying things that line up with what the world is thinking and not what we are thinking.

We start doing things that are popular with the world but unpopular with the conscience we go to bed with at night.

We present the world with someone who is likable so we don't let them in on our biggest secret - the reality that we don't much like ourselves.

We start believing we'll be happier living as someone we feel pressured to be and not who we were created to be.

I think that's why, more and more, I come here in the mornings and tell you what I'm thinking. Most days I am telling you who I am, but there are days, I suppose, when I'm telling you who I really want to be.

There are days, I'm sure, that the wrestling match between what I think and say and do is happening right here - in real time - for all of you to read.

And I'm OK with that. I have to be if I'm ever going to find true happiness. I have to be if I ever want everything I think and say and do to be the same thing.