I’m almost positive I’m not alone in saying that I, today, am not at all the person I was upon entering high school — with good fortune. While I try to look fondly upon most of my early teenage years, the girl I was as a high school freshman still haunts me to this day, and more often than not makes me cringe a bit (read: a great deal) when I think about her for too long. This is for a variety of reasons, some more legitimate than others. I’ve matured a lot since I was 14, both in self and in style. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the world, and I’ve had more time to develop who I am and what I believe.
Though this evolution of sorts has all happened to me, during my life, the common denominator is not myself so much as it is the change I’ve endured. Whether or not I’ve remained the same at my core is too profound a question for anyone to answer, but I know that perpetual exposure to new media and entertainment, fluid social and political climates, and increased opportunities to move on to bigger and better things have had tremendous influence on who I am, what I love, and how I view the world.
Throughout my years of grade school, I had a lot of what I quasi-affectionately call my “phases.” The premise of these is simple and remains applicable to this day. When I find a new interest, I latch onto it — quite aggressively, might I add — and focus most of my energy on learning about and enjoying whatever it happens to be. The interests vary in both nature and intensity; they could be anything from the Beat Generation to K-Pop and last anywhere from two months to two years. Once I find something new to engross myself with, the vigor of the interest in the former fades to cursory appreciation, and the cycle repeats.
Through these phases I’ve spent most of the last four years discovering more and more about myself; with each forceful extreme I’m slowly chipping away at what I want to be and becoming the person I really am. I still have a casual enthusiasm for a great many of my bygone passions, but not everything I enjoy is as immense a part of my life as it once was. I leap at every opportunity to love, and over time I’ve rewarded myself with a vast and well-rounded array of interests.
This is, to a lesser extent, the same with friends and acquaintances. I had friends in elementary and middle school that I no longer keep in touch with, and even friends from high school that I drifted from within a few months or a couple of years. The pattern was generally the same: I would meet someone new at one stage in my life, aligning on a shared interest or a class we took together, and within however long we’d discover that we had nothing in common beyond a single aspect or period of time; we would remain friendly acquaintances, with no fostered connections beyond the superficial.
Despite the coming and going of some, I do have friends that have stood the test of time, through fluctuating interests and hyper-awkward adolescent development — my core group from high school, the people I’ve grown up with at summer camp, and even the friends I’ve made thus far at college. It’s these oh-so-frequent changes in passion and personality that have revealed who I truly mesh with and who I don’t, and I’ve come out on the other side of all this uncertainty with some of the most cherished relationships I will ever have. We don’t necessarily like or believe in the same things, but we like and believe in each other, and that’s what matters.
Living in such a progressive, expanding age has made a great impact on who I am as well. As I grew up, I watched the world grow with me: I’ve witnessed leaps and bounds in the areas of technology and civil rights, and I’ve had more freedom to cultivate my own views — with help of the fountainhead of information that is the world wide web, dare I say it — than I might have had, should I have been born a century or even a decade earlier. I’ll be the first to admit that take accessibility for granted, and this wealth of knowledge on which I have so heavily been able to rely has shaped and sustained me more than I will ever understand.
Even the changes involved in going to college have imparted significant influence. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve grown accustomed to being away from home, far removed from friends and family. I have to work harder than I did in high school, and I’ve had to learn all over again, after four years, how to adapt to my environment, put myself out there, and make new friends. Inconstancy is my new constant, and in nine weeks I’ve become more comfortable with myself than I’ve ever been in the past, something I was unable to say before I moved in.
These changes and cycles, internal and external, probably won’t stop, and I hope they never will. Change is often scary and never easy — it’s hard to let go of what you love. Regardless, I desperately want to keep learning and growing and discovering things about myself. I don’t have to be static to be stable — I have to reject complacency to find contentment. There are always new changes to be undergone, new levels of excitement and self-revelation to be had, and I’m ready for all of it.
