As June rolls by, a variety of rainbow flags dot the public landscape – each one a little herald celebrating the right “to be yourself”. There is a subtle but destructive error at the heart of “just be you” culture. We often like to describe ourselves with absolute terms: “I’m an introvert”, “I’m not a musical person”, or, as this month reminds us, “I’m gay”. Recognising limits is key to self-knowledge, but only when they really are our limits. Words have a way of shaping perception and, in turn, shaping reality. Self-knowledge without truth is merely self-deception. Without the truth of what I am, “being myself” ceases to be liberating and becomes limiting.

The danger of “be yourself” culture is that we forget that human beings are not static creatures. We forget that we can change ourselves far more than we think. We must speak about ourselves in a way that is both true and freeing; otherwise, our speech can limit our potential for good works or even wound our character.

Words help us to understand reality, but they also have the power to shape it. To the Catholic, words are not frivolous things. They are full of a delicate and terrible power. Two little words like “I do” indissolubly bond man and wife; the priest mutters absolvo te in the confessional and a soul is rescued from hellfire; the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and death itself died.

There is a creative power in words chiefly because they are ideas. They help us grasp reality. Our senses wrestle with the changing world, like Menelaus wrestled the sea god Proteus, but words pin reality down to an idea. Words uncover the hidden form beneath matter. Like Adam, we can know and name creation. Best of all, we can name ourselves. What is chiefly delightful in knowing that we are men – as opposed to trees or mailboxes – is that we are now free to become good men. Like a bloodhound that has just caught a scent, we are off.

Yet words do more than describe reality; they influence how we act within it. A man who constantly says, “I am lazy,” is tempted to excuse laziness. A man who says, “I struggle with laziness,” leaves room for improvement. The difference may seem small, but it is the difference between identifying with a defect and recognising a defect. The names we give ourselves often become the standards by which we live.

Yet something has gone wrong. For the common man, human nature hardly figures in his thoughts. Modern science, he imagines, has disproven it. Man is little more than a clever ape. Instead, people increasingly understand themselves according to their tastes, attitudes, desires and personality traits. They are movie buffs, outdoorsy, neurodivergent, creative, anxious or introverted. These qualities that make us quirky and different are now treated as permanent facts – as though they define who we are.

In reality, the reverse is closer to the truth. Our nature has always been what we cannot change. We are rational animals made for truth, goodness and community. Character, however, is largely the result of repeated choices. Courage, patience, honesty and discipline are acquired through action. Even our desires are shaped by habit and environment, as every advertising company understands. We have conflated who we are with what we are, and this confusion has not been without consequence.

There is a danger when we speak about ourselves. As creatures made to know and speak the truth, we are compelled either to live up to what we say or to live down to it.

We might distinguish three ways of speaking about ourselves. The first is liberating speech, which apprehends the truth and points us towards growth. The second is limiting speech, which mistakes temporary traits for permanent realities. The third is harmful speech, which embraces vice as part of one’s identity.

Liberating speech names reality truthfully while preserving the possibility of growth. It neither denies weakness nor treats weakness as destiny. If I am prone to anxiety, then recognising it can free me to overcome it. If I am weak, then I can train to become strong. When I know that I am overweight, I am free to lose weight. Such speech is truthful because it acknowledges reality, but it is liberating because it leaves room for conversion.

The opposite of liberating speech is limiting speech. Not all harmful self-description is openly corrupting. Sometimes it merely freezes a temporary condition into a permanent identity. Perhaps you say that you are not a morning person, that you are bad at reading, or that you simply are not musical. Maybe you have merely failed to develop these parts of yourself. There is a desire in the human heart for something stable, but we often demand stability of things that are changing. We become so eager to know ourselves that we embrace a shadow. The risk is that we mistake the passing for the permanent and miss out on a great deal of good.

Most dangerous of all is harmful speech. Let us distinguish carefully between the humility of recognising faults and the pride of embracing them. If I claim impatience, cowardice, dishonesty or lust as part of my identity, if I demand that others affirm me while I live out these faults, then in a real way I curse myself. Another word for curse is malediction. From the Latin male and dicere, it literally means “to speak evil”. When we claim vice as our own, we speak evil over ourselves. Far from “being myself”, I am degrading myself.

The opposite is benediction – to speak the good. To acknowledge that one is capable of courage, generosity, chastity or self-mastery is not pride but truthfulness. Good speech blesses because it directs us towards the good we are meant to become. A benediction does not deny weakness; it calls forth what is best in us.

We should neither curse ourselves by embracing vice nor imprison ourselves by mistaking changeable traits for fixed realities. Let us instead be diligent in our self-examination and slow to self-description. We can only truly say who we are in the light of what we are. Then we can respond to weakness by becoming who we ought to be.

In the words of Saint Josemaría Escrivá: “Don’t say: ‘That’s the way I’m made... it’s my character.’ It’s your lack of character. Be a man.” (The Way)

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