Have you ever felt like the way you are engineered, like your natural personality, that is, being you, prevents you from getting opportunities that can advance your personal growth? Like being you mostly holds you back instead of helping you change and grow? Well I have, and it’s something that I constantly battle with.
You are usually told to be you without apologizing for it, but this is life where you have to survive and survival requires aggression. It requires taking the bulls by the horns,( opportunities in this case) quickly adjusting to evolving trends and being ready for anything.
But what if you are not? What if you are a shy and an awkward person? Or a silent genius? A private person who knows so much but says so little? A person who, though you can adapt to change, you prefer to not have to? That you prefer everything in your world to stay exactly the way it is, because it is a good and simple place to be? Or maybe you are a person who is meticulous in planning each and every detail of your life, so adapting to change is more difficult?
I always envy extroverts. They don’t even have to try. The world is theirs for the taking. Communication comes so natural and easy for them. And most times, opportunities seek them out, instead of the other way round. But I also can’t fail to acknowledge that introverts have done pretty well for themselves. However, personally I’m stuck in this zone where I have to choose between being Me, and becoming this other person who looks, talks and acts like me, but really isn’t.
We preach a lot about standing our ground and learning not to hide, but embracing every aspect of our very selves, but what we do in contrast is rather pitiful. We may change to please people or be forced to change in order to make a livelihood for ourselves. We may change to fit in or change to blend in rather than stand out. We may change to preserve our reputation though some changes bring a lot of positivity to our lives, like earning money in order to provide for both ourselves and our loved ones, we need to draw a line.
You and I need to create boundaries. Drawing a line will help us stay sane, such that we don’t change and in turn become people we dread. That we don’t change and as a result, lose our principles, our moral fiber and being. That we don’t end up losing our loved ones because we have gone in too deep and ended up pushing them away. Don’t change when you know that in making that choice you will end up losing yourself.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions; however, it usually starts small. At first you may do it for love, whether it’s self-love or love for your loved ones. But as you go in deep, you get desperate. It’s only when you are so far down the road, when it’s too late to turn back, that you realize just how much a cost you are paying, how much it has taken from you. Some never make it out alive. Others are lucky to get another chance. But you don’t get out of hell without being scarred. And sometimes death might be a relief. But you will have to live with the choices you made.
I know we do a lot, we go through a lot to survive. And life is unexpected, always changing. The wheels of fate always twisting and turning, trying us over and over and over again. But even though sometimes we do what we have to at the moment, don’t lose that spark that makes you, You. Without it, we would all be common and bland and uninteresting.
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