who we are

I still sometimes feel myself attached to the idea that we need to know who we are, that we have to have a neatly packaged, 2 sentence intro on our passions and pursuits.

I’ve known for a couple of years now that it’s a bad way of thinking about things. It limits you into the box of what you think you know and prevents you from really feeling comfortable to explore more. People change. That’s all we’re really guaranteed to do.

So why do I still feel myself gravitating towards it?

To reflect:

It’s comfortable. I can latch myself onto it, mindlessly “do more” of that area of thing (even if it’s not something I really like), and I’ll be “fine.” It’s why I loved engineering in high school when I was tweaking about what I wanted to spend my four years of high school on. I don’t have to ever be curious again about what I might actually like or who I might actually be.

I really tossed the idea aside in junior year. I found new interests, threw myself into them. But then I found myself in the space of, “this isn’t something that I started early on in, and therefore won’t be great in, so why spend that time anyways if I’m not going to be great at it.” “If anything, I should have just stuck to my script and comments, to my two sentence opener on who I am.” But that’s not me now anymore, is it? Some part of it is, but I’ve also learned and seen more.

Now, I’m in the process of rediscovering the balance of working towards something new and knowing that it’ll be messy, while also preserving what I know I’m good at. Here’s to hoping (and knowing to some extent) that everything I try now will come back to me sometime in the next 80 years.

It’s late right now–2AM–so I definitely should not be thinking like this. This is when the thoughts get messy and spiral-ey.

But here we are anyways.

Next time,

Elaine