Come as you are

The Retune Blog - 8th September 2023

For the first time ever I went to a stretching class at a dance school last week. Before I went I asked the inevitable question, what are you going to wear? It’s one of the questions most of us will relate to asking at one time or another when we’re off to somewhere we haven’t been before.

If I were to be analytical about it, I’d say there were two aspects which underlie the question; first the practical, and then the psychological. Practically speaking, I wanted to make sure I was going to be wearing something which would allow me to exercise without restriction or distraction. But then there was also the psychological aspect of the question, the part which was saying I also didn’t want to look out of place.

I opted for shorts and a t-shirt. Pretty straight forward and non-descript really. But those questions of presenting ourselves to help us fit in both practically and psychologically are ones which are innately human. Indeed, the fear of not fitting in is something dealt with in the 1991 Nirvana anthem Come as you are. The song is full of wonderfully contradictory lyrics that show just how mixed up we can be:

Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be … as a friend, as an old enemy. Take your time, hurry up.

When discussing the song, the late Kurt Cobain explained the song was about how people were expected to act, hence his international use of contradictory and confusing lyrics. Yet, with the grungy guitar sound and paradoxical lyrics comes the title and this lyric of hope:

Come as you are

Since Cobain’s death, in 1995, his former hometown of Aberdeen, Washington put up road signs reading; Welcome to Aberdeen. Come as you are. It’s not only a great memorial to Cobain, but also a fantastic reminder to us all that it is not just others, but more often and more significantly ourselves who try to make ourselves fit in. Yet what we really need to learn is that in at least a psychological way, we always need to come as we are. And for this to happen, we also need to welcome others as they are.