Nicknames May 17, 2010

This post is about nicknames and how annoying I find them sometimes.

Today I got a link to a blog from a friend. I liked the blog a lot and I found the blogger to be a very interesting individual. He is an erudite I would love to learn a thing or two from, but he is nowhere to be found. It’s just his nickname and his blog. And while I was reading the “About” page which was talking about the “nickname” and not saying much about the guy himself I remembered my acting teacher from high school. I admired him a lot – a complex person, dressing in simple clothes, always smoking elegantly (this made him look a bit mysterious) and asking questions I have never thought about. One of the questions that got stuck in my mind forever was: “Aren’t you proud of your name?”. He asked me this question at my first acting course, when I didn’t even know if I was in, because they were selecting very few people and I badly wanted to be among the selected ones, but I had no clue what they expected from me. The first thing they asked us was to present ourselves. To pronounce our names as in “My name is…” and then to sing our names. It seemed dumb to many of us, like…they already knew our names from the moment our parents subscribed us there…Anyways, one by one we told our names. Since to me at that moment it seemed unimportant and I was a very shy compared to nowadays, I told them my name as if I would have sad a bad joke and I knew it was a bad joke: in a low voice, without any pride, almost inaudible. Aaaand yes, I saw my teacher’s face saddening. And then he explained it all to us: you might like or dislike the name your parents gave you but you should learn to cherish it. After all, it’s the it that defines the who. It’s not a tag as many call it, is so much more. Is the “how they call you” when they think about your actions, when they love you, when they hate you, it’s even how you call yourself when you look in the mirror or try to encourage yourself to become a go getter! It’s part of you and when someone asks you what’s your name you should pronounce it loud and clear, and if the context allows it, you should also add a look straight in the eye of the questioner and a firm handshake. Of course if all this represents you and defines who you are.  If not, you can stay little and hide behind a nickname, even if you are grand. You can make the nickname the gatekeeper to the real you, so that the curiosity and love of others will not reach your heart…if that’s who you want to be. But if you believe that most of the people on this globe are good people and don’t mean you harm, like I do, then you don’t need a gatekeeper to your heart.