Finding Myself - The Culmination of a Lifetime

There are some things about me that are obvious even to outsiders. I am fifteen. A girl. Brunette. Then there are the things that are less apparent while still manifesting tangibly, dreams and desires and fears. I want to be a graphic designer. I want to skydive and bungee jump. I am afraid that I will fail to do any of these things. And deepest down, there are the things that I am unsure of. I cannot define myself beyond meager phrases that convey little of what I feel about myself and my world. While I will probably have a better idea of who I am when I’m older, I think part of the problem is that our identities are constantly in flux, making them impossible to clearly define. I am not so self-involved as to think myself unique in this; I am sure it is an ailment many are afflicted with.
Our past experiences shape how we live in the present. When I was seven, I would wait at my mom’s workplace for her to take me home. While I sat in her office, I would draw pictures of rail-thin women in fur coats and high heels for her coworkers. It was often my favorite part of the day, a respite from hours spent at school regurgitating facts. “School was lots of rules and sitting with your hands folded… I liked looking outside the window and thinking.” (Straw into Gold: The Metamorphosis of the Everyday by Sandra Cisneros) The other day, as I drew a face with a Cheshire cat grin and firecracker red curls on a birthday card for my grandmother, I thought back on those early sketches. Perhaps it was that feeling of relaxation that I first felt while sitting at my mother’s desk with a heap of colored pens in front of me that has led me down the path I walk today.
Last week I sent in my application to a summer course at a prestigious art camp. Hopefully I will be accepted and it will become something important not just for this summer, but for my life. Being accepted will almost certainly affect my future career. But maybe it’ll go beyond that. Maybe it will help me figure another part of my identity out by opening another door for me to run through.
Some people lack the inner voice that tells them under no uncertain terms that this is what they should do with their lives. They learn about themselves and what they want from the people they meet. A short conversation can make you see the world in a brand new way, and new eyes beget new identities. I used to treat hiking with mild disdain. It was alright, yes, but not something I really enjoyed. I’d much rather go on a bike ride or sit at the beach than spend my afternoons trekking up some rocky path to the summit of some hill with a merely passable view. One of my friends has since changed this perspective. Over the years since I first met him, he’s convinced me to go on countless hikes, some short jaunts up Terrace Hill, which is only a few blocks from my house, and others long walks in the hot midday sun to look down from the top of Bishop’s Peak. As reluctant as I am at the beginning, when the hike is done and I can sit back, look up, and think I climbed that! it’s the greatest feeling in the world. If left to myself, I’d probably have hiked less than a third of what I have hiked with him and would never have realized that I really do love hiking. I’m not saying that hiking has made me a radically different person, but it has changed me, in the way everything we do does. Remaining close-minded to the fun that can be had if you are open to suggestions is “a shortsighted strategy” that creates internal stasis of the worst sort. “The most stimulating way to open your life and transform yourself into a more complete member of the species” is to live and enjoy living. (If Only We All Spoke Two Languages by Ariel Dorfman)
Everyone and everything change who you are. The difference is in the varying permanence of these changes. Some, like the influence of a best friend, stay forever while casual acquaintances have no true effect beyond the present. When it comes down to it, however, the main influence in your life is you. I am the one who decides whether it is personally worth it to scale those mountains, apply to those art camps. Other people may have differing opinions or interests, some of which may interest me, but in the end my future and who I am is all up to me.
Perhaps what life teaches us is who we really are when society fades away and our true selves remain. Some day everyone who surrounds you now will have melted away, and with them will go the smaller details. You’ll forget the color of your first crush’s eyes, the brightness of the sun in the sky on that one day that was so immeasurably beautiful. These are not unimportant things, no. But they are only what we make of them. It takes years to fill in the blanks of who and what we are. In the end, no matter who we become, the main thing we learn is to say “I am me.” (How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston)