This is me
Countless times we’re asked to tell a little about ourselves, about who we are, wether it is in an icebreaker at school or at work, or just filling our Instagram or Twitter bio. Personally I’ve always found describing myself rather difficult. Obviously I am usually expected to say something superficial, like my age, where I come from, what I study and so on. So I’d say something like: I’m a 21-year-old university student from Finland, I study English philology as my major and I’m currently an exchange student in England. On my free time I enjoy reading, writing, watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, and playing games with my friends. But in the end those things don’t really tell much about who I am as a person. So who am I? What are those magical words that make me me?
I feel like every day I’m a different person than I was the day before. Not completely, but as I gain new experiences or learn something, it actually makes physical changes in my brain. I grow older as the years go by and every seven years almost every single cell in my body has been replaced by another. Over the years I pick up new ways of talking and moving, I pick up new hobbies and interests, and lose interest in things that I enjoyed before. I meet new friends and lose touch with the old ones. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I “grow up” and I might change my mind about it many times after I do. I am constantly changing and always evolving. So how do I define myself? Is there something permanent that makes me who I am? Am I essentially the same person all throughout my life despite the constant change?
I spent a lot of time thinking about these questions and finally came up with a possible solution to find answers to them. Maybe I’m not the right person to give the answers because I’m blind to many of my features. So why not ask the people, who know me the best? That would allow me to compare their answers and see if there was some similarities or differences between them. So I sent a message to my siblings: “if you had to describe me, who/what I am, in your opinion, how would you do it?”. After all we grew up together so they’ve seen it all from the beginning. However, since they’ve known me my entire life their point of view might be rather one-sided. Therefore, I decided to ask my housemates the same thing. They haven’t known me for very long, so they know me best as the very person I am today. And finally, I sent the same question to my best friend. After all, he’s the person I share my thoughts with. Obviously I didn’t tell them what the question was for before they had all given me their answers.
And soon enough the answers arrived. Reading through them was definitely an emotional experience. I was completely surprised by the things that they’d written. Fair enough, the answers were mostly positive, as you might expect from the people close to you, but they were also objective enough to add some of my unfavourable qualities as well. Almost everyone described me as a kind person, who gets along with others and is easy to talk to, as well as humorous and laid-back. They also told me that they see me as a calm and patient person, but also a bit shy or introverted. Many of them also described me as loyal, intelligent and open-minded, but they also told me I lack self confidence and don’t show my full potential. Few of the answers actually mentioned anything about my background or hobbies (only a couple hinting that I was kind of a geek). Even though I aim to be many of those things, I was surprised that those were the things that they actually chose to best describe me. I was also surprised to see how many similarities their answers had and yet every answer was different. Every person brought up some different aspects of my personality. There were even descriptions that completely contradicted each other.
But those weren’t the only things I was surprised by; after I revealed everyone the reason for my question, I had many interesting conversations about self-image and about the way that we perceive ourselves and the people around us. We discussed how we often are unable to see the things that the people close to us see and love us for, and how we are more prone to focus on the things in ourselves that we are not happy with. How we only see the imperfections and how we often feel like we should be doing something better. A few people even shared their experience of fighting with poor self-esteem and how they had eventually realised that the people around them actually saw a lot of good qualities in them and appreciated them for who they were. So as a result of my little research I learned not only a lot about myself and how other people see me, but I also learned a lot about the people close to me.
I still think we change as we grow older and gain more life experience, but there are also things that remain fairly permanent. And if we are to determine ourselves as the combination of all our qualities and features, it is only logical to conclude that we won’t always remain the same. Maybe we aren’t even one person in the present, but rather have many versions of ourselves, which we show to different people. And that’s perfectly fine, as long as we are able to recognise ourselves and say: “this is me”.
