This story begins with an uncoordinated girl putting on roller skates for the first time and, after two and a half hours, ends in her falling on her butt a total of three very hard times.

During those two and a half hours, there were some very important discoveries made, the first and most apparent one being that I can’t roller skate. By the end of the night, what I was doing could most aptly be described as fast-paced panic, due to an inability to stop, with the occasional fall and inability to turn.

But another thing came from that night.

We’re always told that character is what you do when no one is watching. When seeing someone in need, a person’s response says a lot about their focus or values.

While skating, there was a girl off the rink that was alone, struggling to skate and wasn’t able to make it back to her group of friends and family. Many people, young and old, skated right by her. I give props to one of my roommates for spotting her, and both of us went over to help. Upon pulling her back to her friends, their responses were a little less than welcoming or concerned.

To make matters worse, there were younger children on and off the rink who made it very apparent that my friends, who were not able to skate as well as them, were not welcomed due to their lack of skill. Children coming up to adults and openly shunning them or pushing arms down as beginners try to steady themselves are two very concerning actions.

They made me realize that as a child, we focus on ourselves. Our problems are our own. Am I pretty? Am I popular? We are self-centered and seem to forget that other people have problems or need help. When we grow up, we slowly begin to realize the needs of others, and our problems begin to involve other people.

Do they like me? Why are they mad? How can I help them?

Sometime between being a child and being an adult, there is a change in the focus of our lives, from focusing on how we view ourselves to beginning to think about how we want others to view us. There isn’t a right or wrong perspective. In fact, I’d argue that both are important things to keep in consideration.

But the problem is that we start to let the opinions of others weigh on ourselves too much. Young children speak their minds and are confident in themselves because they don’t care what the world thinks, just themselves. As we grow, we censor ourselves because we want to be someone that someone, or everyone, likes. And if we feel we aren’t liked, we take it personally.

So where is the line between being too self-centered and caring too much about what other people think? That's a question I have been asking myself for a few years now. I wish I had the answer to this to share with you because I bet it would do the both of us a whole lot of good.