Caryn Lerman, Director of USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck Medicine of USC, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“On Transitions and Letting Go of Who You Had to Be
Nietzsche wrote “Become who you are.” For most of my career, I thought that meant becoming more professional, more polished, more “appropriate.” But here’s what I’m realizing at 65: Maybe becoming who I am means returning to the irreverent hippie kid who played Woodstock on repeat but never got to go.
I was born in 1960, just at the cusp of the boomers. At heart, I was always a bit boho, counter-culture, irreverent. Then I became a clinical psychologist, a researcher, a cancer center director. I learned to tone it down, play it straight, fit the mold. That’s what success required.
But here’s the paradox Nietzsche understood: Sometimes “becoming” means unbecoming. Shedding the layers you added to survive, to advance, to belong.
As I step into this next chapter without a rigid plan, I’m not trying to become something new. I’m trying to remove what was never really me in the first place.
All I know is that there’ll be more Woodstock and f-bombs, and less corporate polish.”
More posts featuring Caryn Lerman.