Dust… Wind… Dude

By Noel Bagwell
November 2, 2009

And now, this, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), courtesy of IMDb:

[Bill and Ted are in Ancient Greece]
Bill: [approaching Socrates] How’s it going? I’m Bill, this is Ted. We’re from the future.
Socrates: Socrates.
Ted: [whispering to Bill] Now what?
Bill: I dunno. Philosophize with him!
Ted: [clears his throat, to Socrates] “All we are is dust in the wind,” dude.
[Socrates gives them a blank stare]
Bill: [scoops up a pile of dust from the basin before them and lets it run out of his hand] Dust.
[he blows the remainder away]
Bill: Wind.
Ted: [points at Socrates] Dude.
[Socrates gasps]

Lately, I’ve been thinking about something Socrates is given credit for having said. Socrates said, “Be as you wish to seem.” I’m pretty sure that’s terrible advice, particularly if you’re of the persuasion that one should “be yourself.”

If you’re of the opinion that you inherently are vastly different from the way you wish to appear, yet you are happy with you you inherently are, that’s mostly when you’ll consider Socrates’s advice to be terrible. Frankly, I think more people are in that position than they would probably admit.

I guess if you think you can improve yourself, and you wish to appear to others to be a better person, the best way to do that is to try to follow Socrates’s advice, and “be as you wish to seem.” If you want to “be yourself,” though, you’d better ignore the sage and try to find people that like who you are, rather than trying to impress people who would only like who you if you appear to be someone they would like.

Just thinking out loud here, folks. What are your thoughts? Should you “be as you wish to seem,” “be yourself,” or some context-based mixture of the two? Which would make you happier? Is happiness really that important? Drop me a line in the comments section below and tell me what you think.