If someone were to ask you if you have 'found yourself' in life thus far, what would you say? As you try to fully digest this ambiguous question, you might crinkle your eyebrows with confusion or frantically look around like a lost puppy searching for an acceptable answer. This question is not easy to answer because the answer is constantly changing with time. Within your life span, you experience countless emotional and psychological changes caused by meaningful (and sometimes traumatic) situations that profoundly impact your identity. It is often said “people don’t change,” but I beg to differ. We are constantly changing, evolving, and growing as humans. It would be foolish to assume someone is not capable of positively transforming his or her life because of how easy it is to contrarily become lost with mistake after mistake quietly eating away at your soul.
Because we are continuously learning and developing our character, is there ever truly an “Ah-ha!” moment when we can say, “Yes, this is who I am supposed to be.” I always find myself patiently waiting for this moment—as if one day I will look in the mirror and my reflection will have confiscated any previous doubts, regrets, or hesitations. But this ideal way of living is too abstract for the average human because it is deceivingly hard to maintain this sense of assurance. This moment will only last until you are forced to encounter the next challenge in your life, which innately will cause you to question everything you have learned thus far about yourself.
I think people often use this figurative phrase of “finding yourself” to insinuate hope for the future. We always yearn for something beyond our current status in life because of our refusal to be content. When updating old friends on my new college life, I often notice myself referring to this infamous phrase by confiding “I still don’t know who I am yet” and “I am still searching for who I want to be.” But will I ever know who I am supposed to be? God gave humans endless bounds of potential—but what if I only cease to scratch the surface of mine?
These questions test this theory of self-fulfillment as we simply do not know the multiple roads our lives could travel down. We are not aware of the boundless possibilities that exist in this world. And we are not cognizant of the countless “Ah-ha!” moments we could potentially experience.
If anyone asks you if you are lost or found, there isn’t one correct answer. There is simply the beauty of growth and the blessing of endless opportunities.
