Yes indeed, this world strongly discriminates us, Europeans, especially if we compare ourselves with all those privileged starving African children. They are very happy, because no one ever forces them to be themselves. Can you imagine the following conversation between a starving African child and his mother?

- Mamaa, I’m starving!

- Just be yourself, my darling, and everything will be fine!

No, this could never ever happen, because those people in Africa do have heart.

But here in the cursed West, you always have to be yourself.

'My girlfriend doesn't talk to me and doesn't want to have sex with me since Christmas 2006, and I don't know what to do.'

'Just be yourself!'

'My colleagues don’t talk to me and they've never wanted to have sex with me because I’m ugly, and I don't know what to do.'

'Just be yourself!'

'I've applied for the post of the 'anthropoid ape' in the zoo, but I don't know what they are expecting from me and I don't know how to behave at the interview.'

'Just be yourself!'

It’s not enough to struggle with your job and your partner or with your lack of job and lack of partner, but while struggling you also have to take care of being yourself. It’s especially hard if you’re a man, as - if the urban legend is true - it’s difficult for men to focus on different things at the same time (this is why they always die when the passenger starts speaking to them while they are driving a car.)

It would be nice if there was a little creature (wearing a red cap and long yellow socks) called ‘Real Yourself’ kicking your head from the inside when you misbehave, informing you on a cartoon figure voice about your true needs, opinions and attitudes, so 'you just have to listen inward’.

However, if over the course of one day you can be a weeping little daughter, an authoritarian boss, an unkind morning girlfriend, an envious aunt and a generous uncle, depending on the interactions you take part of, your personality is rather like the Belgian weather than a stabile entity: constantly transforming and always blamed for other people's unhappiness.

Furthermore, if it's possible that in any situation you aren't yourself, then who is replacing you and where are you in the meantime? Is that the postman who popped in so he can earn some pocket money while you are taking a break and play video games in the closet?

And even if there was a real yourself, if this real yourself is a balanced, self confident, generous, superefficient and loving person, then it might be right to always be yourself. But what if the real yourself is an extremely greedy person? Shall you take the money of beggars on the street for the sake of you integrity and self realization and shall you ignore your mother’s birthday because the 'real yourself' prefers swimming in a pool full of golden coins to pleasing some elderly relatives?

But in any case, if you stubbornly believe in the 'be yourself' dream, or at least you want to give it a try, I suggest you to have one day of being truly yourself, and explore what happens. But I'm warning you that it might jeopardize all your social relations, and you risk that none of your beloved ones will bring you ginger cookies for Christmas to the mental hospital.

NORMAL DAY: Your boss calls you and asks you to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for a meeting. You certainly know that no one will ever use it, because the meeting has been already cancelled, but your boss doesn't have time to listen to your complaints. You do your senseless job submissively, but in your mind you call your boss Cheesehead every time you finish with one slide.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: Your boss calls you and asks you to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for a meeting. When he says that he doesn't have the time to listen to your complaints, you start screaming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the phone as loud as you can. When he hangs up the phone, you call him back from a private number, and on an altered voice you tell him that everyone calls him Cheesehead behind his back, and he truly deserves it, because his head looks exactly like a piece of Ementaler with 21% of fat.

NORMAL DAY: You are bored in the office. You write emails and kill time on Facebook.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: You are bored in the office. You entertain yourself with making faces of different kinds of handicapped people. You laugh out loud every time you made the Down syndrome face.

NORMAL DAY: Suddenly you turn horny in the office. You try to kill this feeling with picturing your oldest male colleague naked, dressed in a nurse costume.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: Suddenly you turn horny in the office. You kill this feeling with touching yourself while looking at pictures of women having sex with hot fishes.

NORMAL DAY: You go to the dentist. He says that he has to remove one tooth, and he will give you local anaesthesia. When he gets closer to your mouth with the needle you swallow your dread and open your mouth obediently.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: You go to the dentist. When he gets closer to your mouth with the needle you close your mouth so tight that he needs the help of two hardcore assistants and a crowbar for opening it. After he has finished with the treatment, you firmly refuse paying and tell him that you will bring a suit against him, because he promised you that it won’t hurt.

NORMAL DAY: The guy at the grocery gives you the potatoes which are old and no one else would buy them. You peacefully pay him and throw the potatoes to the garbage when you arrive home.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: The guy at the grocery gives you the potatoes which are old and no one else would buy them. You deactivate him with smashing pumpkins on his head, tie him to the cashier with his hair and force him to eat the raw potatoes one by one while educating him about the principals of good service.

NORMAL DAY: You go for a dinner with a friend. For two hours he talks about his exceptional success at work thank to his outstanding skills and talents, and about his brilliant promotional prospects. He doesn’t even ask you how you are. You listen to him patiently, and try to kill your frustration by stuffing sweets in your mouth until you feel and look as sick and fat as a Hungarian goose.

BEING YOURSELF DAY: You go for a dinner with a friend. After half an hour of listening to him you silently ask him to stop speaking. When he continues, you gently push his face to the red curry, start drumming on his head with the cutlery and don’t stop until he admits how self centred and narcissistic person he is and how deeply ashamed he feels about his overall existence.  

In a world where everyone every time would be himself, we would indeed have a lot of fun. But this is not the right world for having fun.

Therefore my advise is the following: doesn't matter what kind of situation you are in, just ask yourself: what would I do if I was in this situation? (Which is indeed a very stupid question taking into account that you are in the situation). Then, when you have the answer, do exactly the opposite.

For instance, instead of pouring a cup of coffee on your partner because he hasn't been saying a word or smiling for a week, pour a cup of coffee on yourself. This will certainly make him smile. Or if you feel like killing your authoritarian colleague, get down on your knees and sing her the Whitney Houston song 'I will always love you'. As a result she might stop terrorizing you, as no one wants to provoke lunatics.

In case you feel a really strong urge from time to time to be yourself, do it when you're completely alone: there is a lot of space for self realization in the toilet.

There are many unfair expectations and non-functional fake-wisdoms in our Western well-being societies that make staying on the surface even harder. It's not enough to do your things well, wake up in time, eat, work, sleep, procreate and manage not being fired because of pathological procrastination, but, above all, someone up there expects you to even enjoy these things!

Why?

I'm asking you, bearded transcendental entity up in the sky! Don't pretend that you are not hearing me! Yes, I'm asking you, Elvis: why?

There was a guru, I don't know if he was Buddha or Jesus Christ or Silvio Berlusconi who said: 'This might be the last day of your life, so enjoy every moment of it, pal!' (I think it was Jesus Christ, it pretty much sounds like the things he used to say, and I must have read it in the Bible because that's the only magazine I have been reading lately.)

In my humble opinion knowing that this might be the last afternoon of your life is already enough to start breathing in a plastic bag until your face turns purple and you loose enough brain cells to become incapable of thinking about the finite nature of human existence. (Oh God, punish me for the hypocrite expressions I'm using. Humble opinion? Ancient Romans please come back and crucify me on an ironing board.)

If this is the last afternoon of your life, who dares expecting you to enjoy following up invitees of a bloody meeting? (Elvis, is that you? Stop dancing please for a second, and answer our deep existential insecurities. Being dead is a very lousy excuse for not even sending a reassuring text message from time to time. Jesus is dead too, but he still lets me know every now and then that he’s loving me: I read his message yesterday on the wall of the supermarket.)

If this might be the last afternoon of your life, then you should eat Thai food while receiving Thai Massage and having Thai sex and an intellectually challenging Thai conversation about your exceptional beauty with a Peace Nobel priced Thai porn star on the beach of Rio de Janeiro.(What are you saying? That Rio de Janeiro is not in Thailand? Hey, try not to get lost in the details please, but focus on the profound message of what I'm saying.)

If every afternoon might be the last afternoon of your life, then you should do the above mentioned activities every single afternoon. Is it feasible? Well, not really. So why would it make sense to remind yourself on death all the time?

But anyway, this is certainly not the last afternoon of your life: how could it be if you paid a lot of money for your gym membership for the next two months? Life would never be so unfair. Yes, children might starve in Africa, but still, there must be limits of injustice.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter if this is or isn’t the last day, as there cannot be any justification for expecting you to be present in the moments of a usual day:

1. Waking up when it's dark and cold outside and not finding anything in the fridge apart from some medication for eardrum inflammation. Although it seems eatable, when you check it closer you see that it has expired in 1984, so you have to go to work with an empty stomach. BE IN THE MOMENT

2. It's raining like hell outside, even your liver gets completely wet and you look like aquatic hen in her mid life crisis by the time you get to your office. ENJOY THE PRESENT

3. When you arrive your officemate offers you the contact details of a good hairdresser and a psychoanalyst. APPRICIATE EVERY SECOND OF LIFE

4. You arrive too late to lunch so the canteen is already closed. When you ask if they still have something left for you to eat, they confuse you with a beggar and they don’t let you leave until you finished with all the leftovers. BE OVERJOYED

5. Your boyfriend asks you in a restaurant if you wanted to be his wife. When you say yes, he tells you that he was joking, and after half an hour of hysterical laughing he calls his friend to tell him about the great joke he just made. Well, it's true that you could learn a bit faster, as this was the fifth time he made this joke in two months and you still said yes at the crucial moment. EXPLORE THE BEAUTY OF THE MOMENT

6.   Your mother calls you and tells you that unfortunately you won't get anything from the grandparents' heritage, because your grandmother didn't know how to spell your name so she left it out of her last will, but no problem, because with your father and brothers they agreed on giving you grandma’s wheelchair what is almost new and only two wheels of it are broken. ALWAYS SEE THE HALF FULL GLASS

7. You see two children beating up a very small one in the park. When you run to them yelling to stop, the two aggressors start hitting your head with the small child. They don’t stop until you call them 'Master' and promise to pay a fee for entering the park every time from now on. SEE THE GOODNESS IN EVERYONE

8. A young mother starts crying for the police when you try to help taking out the baby carrier of the metro car. After some minutes of struggle you slowly start to understand that she doesn’t want to get out of the metro at your stop. It certainly doesn’t help that you're wearing your ex-boyfriend’s T-Shirt with the picture of Charles Manson. BE IN THE HERE AND NOW

It’s certainly the wrong approach to be present in the moments of boredom (40%), frustration (40%), frustrated boredom (9%) or bored frustration (8%). (Please forgive me of not talking much about the moments of satisfaction (2%), excitement (0,8%) and happiness (0,2%). I read too much Kafka between the age of 2 and 5 thanks to the educational principals of my parents: we didn’t have TV and this was the only way to keep me quiet when they wanted to have sex. First they tried to mix whisky in my milk, but when I started to call the old neighbour lady 'pussy queen', they switched to intellectual sedatives. Reading one page of The Castle made me feel so hopeless that I didn’t move nor made any noise for one week.)

So, my advice for making the best out of these few decades is to: BE IN THE THERE AND THEN! 

Be constantly and consciously somewhere else in some other time!

For instance, while giving a boring power point presentation in the office, be in Paris in 1792 giggling at the execution of some howling aristocrats. Or while having lousy sex with your ex partner, be in the bed of James Dean in April 1953.

If you manage to be constantly somewhere and some time else, your life will be incomparably more exciting and rewarding. Yes, you might end up in a mental hospital, but there you can always imagine yourself being back in the office making lousy coffee for your bullying colleagues or preparing the world's most unnecessary PowerPoint presentation and then arrive to the point when you can indeed appreciate the present, the moments of peace in the company of the other kind fools, swimming together happily in your saliva.

Do you feel that your life is lacking real challenges? Do you feel that every day is the same?

Don’t worry, there is a solution for your problem!

Develop alcohol addiction! Use hard drugs!

By being an alcoholic, your life will suddenly become full of challenges. There is nothing more reassuring than waking up in the morning, knowing that indeed, there is a reason to live, namely: to stop drinking. And what is even better is realizing in the afternoon that there is another meaning in life, which is even more meaningful than the previous one, namely: to drink again!

If you are a hard drug addict you can try all kind of things you didn’t dare to try before, in order to cover the costs of your extravagant hobby, for example: stealing the pocket money of little children on the street; prostituting yourself or murdering an old-woman money-lender and being sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia. How challenging!

Don’t miss out on this exceptional opportunity!

If the answer is yes, let me introduce you a simple and efficient method to fight loneliness:

Develop paranoid schizophrenia!

Symptoms: constant feelings of being watched, followed or persecuted.

You will be persistently receiving particular attention from others: from the gnome who is watching you through the window while you are watching TV, from the man with the black teeth in the cupboard or the clown under your bed, waiting for you to fall asleep.

No more lonely nights!

Choose Panic Attacks!

Advantages:

1. If you like to travel and discover different cultures, choose this option. You will have access to low cost flight tickets in space and time through reincarnation (no airport taxes!).

2. Enlightenment must be really cool. No more greed, hate or delusion. No insistence, jealousy or anger. Just picture yourself, sitting on a cloud in the Nirvana, drinking Coca Cola and watching the Winter Olimpics without any disturbing emotions or desires while your girlfriend is getting exhaustively acquainted with your best friend in Bora Bora. Wouldn’t it be nice? (Don’t say that I have a primitive concept of Enlightenment, please. I have a Masters degree in sociology.)  

Disadvantages:

1. That karma thing. It truly sucks. Just think about those times when you scared the hell out of your little brother, making him believe that Mum turns into Freddy Krueger while he is sleeping. What if he will give all that misery back to you next life when you will reborn as his electronic toothbrush?

Advantages:

1. You will stay quite fit by doing the praying exercises 5 times per day.

2. Allah akbar. (Meaning: ‘Allah is great, no matter what they say. Words can't bring him down. Allah is great, in every single way, yes, words can't bring him down. So don't you bring him down today.’)

Disadvantages:

1. Mecca is far from here, pal.  You don’t have enough holidays for such a walk.

2. People will get out of the metro when you get in because they believe that you have hidden TNT into your 3 years old daughter. (They don’t know that your little girl is already so evil that she refused to swallow the TNT you offered her for breakfast. The stubborn child is not willing to explode before she succeeds to transform the kindergarten to an Al-Qaeda summer camp.)

Advantages:

1. Jesus will love you.

2. God will love you.

3. I’m not sure about the taste of the Holy Spirit, but (s)he might like you too.  

(Three quite influential friends at one blow! Think about it!)

Disadvantages:

1. Too many restrictions. You can’t have other gods (not even a tiny little god in the drawer), can’t make any idols (your adoration for garden gnomes is questionable),  can’t make a wrongful use of the name of God (can’t sign more fake cheques in his name), and can’t even murder or steal (downloading pirated films is stealing). All the fun is gone, as there is nothing more relaxing than bearing false witness against your neighbour on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Advantages:

1. You can explicitly refuse your boss’ request for doing extra work on Saturday with reference to your religion.

2. By joining the team of this all history long reality show ‘The Survivals’, you will develop new extreme sport skills such as Red Sea Crossing or Fiddling on the Roof .  

Disadvantages:

1. No one will believe that you personally haven’t been involved in the assassination of Jesus Christ.

2. You will also be suspected to be member of a world-wide underground conspiracy, which involves a lot of money and power and evil intentions to ruin national economies and control the U.S. foreign politics while drinking the blood of Christian children with vodka and cayenne pepper. (Though you would be slightly interested in such activities, it’s truly disappointing that your invitation to join the Club has been probably lost by the post office.)