The Pretender

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening?
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
When the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen.

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender.
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there
--Jackson Brown, "The Pretender"

Who are we willing to become to get what we want?

Along the path of life, we have had to change. Childhood fancies give way to adult longings. Immature pursuits turn into mature ones. Our dreams of what we will become change and evolve. As they should.

But we are all the Pretender, in some way. We pretend to like something we don't for the sake of someone we hope to win the love of. We pretend to know something we don't to belong to a group or get that job. We hide our true feelings, wither because we don't want to hurt someone- more likely we don't want to get hurt.

As an adult, I've often seen the younger people around me, teenagers and college students, struggle with this. They compromise who they really are to be with someone who refuses to see them as they are. They become lesser versions of themselves for the sake of 'love' or of comfort. They play the role others expect them to play, be it jock or nerd or girlfriend/boyfriend or artist or quirky or dumb or smart. Inside there is a longing to be real, to let others know how they truly are.

But increasingly, I've seen people my age and older becoming more Pretenders than who they really are. They are compromising, they are falling short, they are giving up on dreams. They are losing sight of who they REALLY are.

Switchfoot sings, "This is your life, are you who you want to be?" I bet there is a good number of us who would answer that with a profound "No!" We are who our spouse or boss wants us to be. We are whoever we need to be to get him/her into bed. We are whoever we need to be so people will like us. We are who we need to be to pay the bills, or more poetically "Struggle for the legal tender."

Deep down, when I've answered negatively to Switchfoot's question, the fear is not that I have forgotten who I want to be, but that I have forsaken or missed the opportunity to be that person. And it is the fear and longing for that goal that drives me down. It is only when I realize that we are all able to start over, cease the compromise, take off the mask of the Pretender and be who we want to be that I begin to surface.

When we pretend to be that which we are not, our dreams are shallow- all our "hopes and dreams begin and end there"-, we are less than we were made to be. We need to rise up. Above that "everyone else is doing it and it's hard to swim against that current" mentality. We were made for more than this. We were not made to be what everone else is, to do what everyone else does. We were made for holiness.

Holiness is an excellence we cannot hope to achieve on our own. That need not mean we never strive for it. Because we are told we cannot be Holy should drive us all the more to seek it. And only by God's grace may we have it.

Are you who you want to be or are you the Pretender? Your answer to that doesn't depend on you, but whether or not you remain as you are or change, does.