Because my high school was so small, up until the end of my sophomore year, the seniors used to give speeches over what they had learned throughout high school. Given typically at lunch, these speeches ranged from equating high school to television shows to the importance of economic and ecological development in the world. One of these speeches was given by a quiet girl who remained a wallflower in our school, a difficult but impressive feat for a class size of roughly 55. She did not speak on politics but instead talked about the importance of being yourself. When she started her speech, you could feel the general annoyance in the room. A speech on being yourself isn't exactly original, and I myself worried that it would turn into a cheesy, you-can-do anything-if you-just-believe-in-yourself sort of thing. But it's been almost three and a half years since that day, and I have not forgotten it.

She spoke on being yourself, despite people's belief that you have to be the same. She spoke on wearing all black one day and wanting to drive a motorcycle, to deciding you want to drive a convertible by the ocean in big sunglasses the next and having all of that be perfectly okay. She talked about how you can change your hairstyle again and again, how you can decide you don't like who you have become and completely change yourself over in a matter of hours, how you can go from being bitter one day to being open-hearted and open-armed the next and how someone's preconceived conceptions of you shouldn't take away your ability to be whoever you want to be that day.

To me, it was something I hadn't heard before: the idea of being genuine in not being genuine in the eyes of others. I always thought that being genuine meant that you had to be the same through and through, and here was a senior telling me that the true nature of being yourself was being whatever you wanted to be that day, whether it be more kind, more living or more honest then you were the days before or whether it meant dressing a different way simply because you felt like it. In a time of life where it is easy to feel unknown, her understanding of true self was an escape from the adolescent thoughts.

I know I am one of those people that change on a whim, and I rarely find others so drastically like me. I've been known to wear all leather on one day and wear a floral dress the next, want a tattoo one week and not the next. I change my mind on a whim and always struggled with the idea that I was not being a genuine person simply because those I considered genuine around me were nothing like me. But that's the beauty of individuality — it doesn't need to make itself known among vast majorities of people but rather, finds itself in the nooks and crannies of the little things that make people who they are. Wanting change is one of those nooks and crannies, making you who you are. So be a princess one day and a superhero the next. There is no stopping those who refuse to yield.