“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” –Henry David Thoreau
Finding yourself despite yourself is like taking a stroll in the park with your dog and coming face-to-face with a fire-breathing, 3-legged unicorn. It’s sad how monotonous life can be—how we can get sucked into a devastating routine and we somehow [God only knows how] convince ourselves that we’re happy with our lives [because no doubt it's safe and the known is always easier to handle than the unknown that we have no control over].
Sometimes you put up with what you have because you’re scared of trying harder, scared of what could be lurking behind achieving more in life, going after your dreams. The world is a scary place after all, full of lies and cheats, full of anger, hurt and bitterness—but if we don’t taste a piece the pie, we’ll never know what we missed out on or what could have been and wasted opportunities don’t come twice.
How many wasted opportunities was I wasting? Too many. It’s rather overwhelming when I reflect back on my short-lived life [well, I'm still pretty young, anyway] and realize that rather than learn from my mistakes, I fell back into them again, and again, and again, until I reached the point where my mistakes no longer only affected me, but were affecting those around me too. I should have never made the same mistake twice, let alone actually look for different ways to reach the same result. It was my evil subconscious mind, definitely subconscious…
“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.” –Michel de Montaigne
I guess I was lost in the gray area between the carefree world of child’s play and the heavy grind of life for a young adult. Aware of the internal struggle I was facing on an hourly basis, someone told me a few very somber words that changed me in ways I can still hardly believe. “You’ll never find yourself here, because you can’t find what doesn’t exist yet. But you can create yourself here if you allow it to happen.”
The shift from passive recipient of life to active contributor isn’t as straightforward as you might think. It’s easier to live in the here and now, careless of your future, but to think of the sort of damage and setbacks that mindset could be having on my life was my wakeup call.
I had to [still having to] find a balance—somewhere between enjoying now and thinking of my future. The balance is essential [the balance of discovering who we are and who we seek to become] if we have any hope of creating our own lives—our own identity.
“There’s a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.” –Pearl Bailey
You’re surrounded by people; you may be taken by many of them, all of which contributes to shaping up your personality. You’ve spent your entire life listening to people, absorbing their opinions and knowledge dislikes until you are molded into bits and pieces of everyone around you. Who are YOU? If you never met all the people you did in your life, who would you have been?
I realized that the answer lies in holding the important aspects of life that influenced who we have been and who we want to become. You have to learn from your mistakes—each mistake you make is an invaluable lesson learned—appreciate the people you have in your life, the people who love you unconditionally and only ask of you to love them back. They need you [your family] and you need them and after all is said and done, they are the only ones who can guide you, help you through life in your search for yourself. And last but not least, you have to actively search for whatever it is you want to fulfill you in the future.
It’s hard to choose and sacrifice, but when you look at the big picture you realize there was never really a choice to make. Closing one door and opening another is hard—but it’s worth the challenge.
“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” –Alan Alda
