Pledge to be yourself

Many years back I bought a track suite that had "Believe in yourself" written on the track. I loved that! I thought it is a good message to myself and others. Believing in one's capability gives one confidence and motivation to go ahead. I remember that I used to jog wearing  that track. Some people, little inquisitive, some times would try to read the letters on the track  while I walk/run. I would steal a glance of pride and quickly wear an air of indifference, as if I was a celebrity and quite used to people's attention!
But following the rule of nature, those letters faded away after many washes and I lost the motivation to wear the track. Many years went by after that. I forgot that entirely. But memory works in a strange way. As soon as I typed the title section, it brought back the memory associated with "believe..yourself". In other words it hashes "be yourself" and "believe.. yourself" to the same symbol. Now, I am trapped! Every time someone tells "Be", my memory is going to jump to "Believe"! I am now wondering, since most of the time I am not as relaxed (read lazy) as I am right now, if my semantic functioning also changes. Like all my "be" function gets juxtaposed with "believe" function when I am not aware of these small hash errors in the memory retrieve faculty of my brain. Thinking of it, I realize that I must be doing it all the time. Being is as natural, as harmonious as nature is, 'being' means functioning as the nature has designed you, as a necessary part of it. ...But I am afraid, I instead, apply my beliefs and try to be what I believe I should be!
How stupid of me! It is like making a step jump in the beginning of a complex derivation and reach altogether a different solution and claim the originality of the proof! ..I was feeling sad..very sad..and in my sadness I started looking around, hoping to find at least one more person with same predicament as mine. It is painful when you suddenly become aware of your shortcomings and only thing that consoles you is when you find there are others like you!
So I looked around..Ah..I did not need to go too far. The Prime minister believes in good governance but his govt. loathes transparency. Our Finance Minister swears by India's growth story but news report tells that highest number of farmers committed suicide in 2010 due to their financial insolvency. News report also tells that manufacturing sector grew by mere 3% last year. Not to forget that latest observation tells that while India's population continues its growth, the agricultural land cover is going down drastically year after year. How will the nation feed its burgeoning population tomorrow?
Since most my readers are IT professionals, I reckon we also could talk about Indian IT. Indian IT honchos believe they are the visionaries, while most IT companies live and swear by risk-free cheap IT services: India cannot even claim ten percent of the technological asset that China has created in last fifteen years. Neither the IT luminaries have an answer on how India will compete after 10 years from now. "Believe" problem is not limited to top of the pyramid as always is the case with any system. Many IT managers swear by six sigma and quality process but very few of them can claim of delivering a project as planned. Many IT engineers lament about poor job satisfaction but never tread the path of building something on their own...Ah! I felt a sense of relief.. I am not alone, whole system got deformed by operating from "believe"!
It seems fairly logical to think that our first step should be to delink ourselves from 'what we believe' and link to 'what we are'. A journey from 'believe' to 'be' must start with acceptance of what we are, collectively and individually. A foundation of  honest and candid assessment of what we are would help us to recognize the malformations and build a healthy future for next generations. So let's pledge to 'be', simply and fearlessly! From this moment, let's start operating from 'are/am' than 'should' or 'ought'. Let's accept, rather than hide, every shortcoming in us with courage and grace. Let's build a transparent but integrated 'me' first. A transparent and healthy system can only be built by authentic and transparent individual 'me's. Let that be the pledge for this new decade!