My whole youth I was educated to be true to myself. The ultimate goal was to accomplish a level of personal integrity and honor that would affect change and good in this world.

In many ways this education in strict morality and a sense of ethics helped me very much and has lead me toward living a life for which the most part I am proud of.

The downside has been that a continual stress in “being oneself” has lead to confusions on who I really am.

If you get told over and over in your early education how important your integrity is, eventually you may start to think there is something wrong with your integrity or that you somehow are not yourself.

A few days ago my eldest daughter was in the back seat with one of her best friends.

Her friend started to criticize a new child at school. She said that child was weird. Immediately in a non-condescending way Chloe told her, “I don’t want to hear about other people being weird, how do you know, put yourself in their shoes, how would you feel if someone was calling you weird?.”

And just like that I learned more about “being oneself” than in any previous life lesson.

Here was a 9 year old girl having the courage to speak up for another human being and not allow them to be disparaged. She did this, not because she knew I was listening, but because this is how she felt and she had the guts to say how she felt even if it made her friend feel a little bad or risk causing a disagreement. It didn’t, they changed the subject and just like that, the fuse for a good juicy gossip bomb was put out.

Chloe did not learn this from me. I really wish she had.

I told her later that I really admired what she had done and asked her where she had learned to speak out like that. She told me it was just her own idea.

I think possibly the point I was missing all these years in my efforts to be myself was that more important than who you are is what you do. If I was being true to myself and what I desired to do the other night, I likely would have stayed up all night watching Game of Thrones. At that moment, that is what my deepest inner self desired… along with 10 helpings of ice cream.

What Chloe accomplished was a meeting of what she desired and what was right and then following that up with action.

Now that’s the winning combination for pretty much everything.

So maybe integrity is not something taught. Honor is not something you can learn. Maybe it’s in you already.

Maybe you just need to get it all to align in the direction you want it to go.

If my 9 year old can teach me this lesson, I cannot wait to see her grow and watch her journey.

It would be naive of me to think she has reached some zenith of perfection and that my job of parenting is done. I fear for the pressures she will face and the dark paths that lay ahead for her.

We live in an urban environment. She is bombarded with media that tells her the most important thing is to take care of yourself only and all that matters is how you feel in the moment. Throw dignity to the wind to really experience life, but if you wind up destitute on the streets, well, that’s too bad for you.

At least my fear of her kindness being a weakness that people would take advantage of has proven false. She has shown that her kindness is what makes her strong and makes her who she really is.

They really teach you don’t they.

What life lessons have you learned from your children?