Just Do You

It’s easy to get caught up in the idea of what other people expect you to be. It’s easy to analyze yourself and take apart each aspect of your being and try to mold it into a more “perfect” example of what you think others expect from you. It’s easy to become that person that other people want to see, talk to, and be around. What’s not easy is choosing to be yourself in spite of it all.

Despite the deluge of internet quotes and happy-feeling advices telling you to “Be yourself and be happy!”, the nagging from friends that “You’re perfect as you are!”, and the societal love of “individuals”, we all find ourselves at a cross roads where we are in conflict with the things we want to be and what we think others want us to be. Keyword here: Think.

There is no way in the world to enter the mind of another person, firewalls and defenses down, to find the core of what another person thinks about you. And, even so, what a person thinks about you is in constant motion, changing with each passing day and interaction. Allow yourself that change as well.

You see, humans hold themselves to the need to fulfill expectations. We try to assess the feelings of others towards us through the shallow cues that we get from surface interactions, and even the deeper ones are often misleading. Most of the time, others will tell you the things they think you want to hear, creating this sort of reciprocal lying where no one really receives any valuable information. And even if you did, what would it matter?

The opinions of others are completely separate from yours, in origin, in expression, and in feeling, despite how similar they may seem on the surface. Two people saying “I love pizza!” surely don’t feel the exact same way about that pizza: one might like thin crust and the other deep dish.

The point being that humans are all creatures of unfortunate isolation and beautiful individuality. So embrace your individuality. Do not make your choices based on what you think others want to see or hear from you. Make your choices based on what you want to hear and see from yourself.

Attempting to fulfill the expectations of others is a futile game, as you can hardly ever know their true position and more times than not they barely know their own. Instead, constantly reach for the self. Reach for the thing inside that makes you feel more at one with who you want to be, expectations barred. Don’t allow yourself the never, the idea that you could “never” become this, that or the other. Open yourself up to yourself and find out who you are. Just do you, first and only, because that’s the one thing that really exists in the solitary space between our ears.