There Is No Real Me; There Is Only Me

​I went to see the movie Marty Supreme last night. I don't believe this post requires a spoiler alert; this is much more self-reflection than movie review. But I will say the value of the self-reflection made the movie MORE than worth seeing for me.

I'll watch it again. And soon.

The movie is about Marty Mauser, a young man driven to be a world champion table tennis player. Through his drive to get there we come to see what a terribly flawed and beautifully driven and caring character Mauser is.

As the movie went on, and as I watched it sitting between my teen sons - certainly the two most beautiful parts of me - I felt the contradictions in me I was seeing on the screen in Marty Mauser.

Many decades ago, someone I was close to at the time told me "people don't know the real you." Her suggestion was I showed up for other people as a different person than I showed up for her.

I believer there was truth in that.

Maybe people who get closest to us will always see our capacity to hurt, disappoint, sabotage, or fall short. And maybe people who stand a little farther away will more often see our light, purpose, humor, and talent. I don't know.

I do know I lived with great tension after she said that. The tension of carrying both versions of me as if they were two different people.

Marty Mauser is compelling because he’s not a villain and he’s not a saint. He is impulsive, reckless, ego-driven - and also magnetic, alive, passionate, and strangely tender. The movie makes no effort to resolve that contradiction; it just lets us sit inside it.

It invites us in a moment of self-reflection to say, “Yes, that’s me too.”

Over the years I've come to accept about me that both portraits are true. Neither is the whole story. The work and the pain is learning to hold those truths together without hating ourselves for either one. It was never that I was “pretending” with friends. I was being me, just not the only me.

I have come to accept one can be:

the man who leads and inspires

the man who fails and wounds

the man who tries again

the man who breaks

the man who heals

all at once.

Even as my life is driven to be less hurtful and more healing - toward others and myself.

Marty Supreme left me reminded that it's possible to be both deeply flawed, and at the same time, deeply beautiful. In fact, I think that’s not only possible - I believe it’s almost universal.

The people who feel least divided are usually the ones who’ve made peace with the fact that both flaws and beauty live inside them. The people who suffer most are often the ones trying to prove they are only one and not the other.

I left the theatre last night believing that I no longer believe in a "real" me.

There is only me.

Flaws and beauty.

Only me.