There comes a time in everyone’s life where you have to ask yourself the hard questions that only you can answer. As we grow up, we are provided the answers to almost every question we ask. If we asked our mother or father why a building in New York City was so tall, they would tell us something along the lines of how workers climbed into the sky and built it from the sky down. The answers we would receive were a mix of reality and imagination because our little minds could not comprehend too much logic. However, as we grow, we learn that life is never that simple, and it is not as easy to reach the sky as we so originally thought.

As we grow and decide which path we want to travel down like in Robert Frost’s classic poem, “The Road Not Taken,” we have to decide if we want to take the beaten worn down path that everyone tends to gravitate to or to be the bold and unique heroes of our own stories that take the road that is less traveled by. In order to do that, sometimes we need to ask ourselves the hard questions. Who do we want to be? Do we want to conform into the masses or be the one who transforms the masses? We have to identify who we are, and what we stand for, but figuring that out is not as easy as it sounds.

Society and the idea of conformity will always be around, and whether we like it or not, it plays a role in whom we become. We cannot just always conform or go with what everyone wants us to do although it is easier to do so. We have to constantly question ourselves to keep our own lives in check. Do I agree with this? Do I want to do this for the rest of my life? Am I really happy with where I am today, and who I have become?

In high school, like most teenagers, I was trying to find myself in a sea in a mass array of different personalities. You tend not to think about the future but the present. Does this person like me? Will I be looked upon as this if I do that? Will people see me differently? Back then, I did not ask myself who I wanted to be, I asked myself who they would want me to be. The minute I asked myself who I wanted to be, I knew what I wanted to do in my future. I wanted to study English.

My constricting community did not embrace my passion. When I would express to others that I wanted to study English, and more specifically writing, my peers would scoff at me. They told me that I would never find a career; they told me that I would live the rest of my life out struggling paycheck to paycheck; they called English the ‘starving’ degree. They told me I would never make anything out of it and they told me to study a more practical field. So for awhile, I tried to find the practical major that fit me best and nothing clicked for me. Then I asked myself the hard questions. Who are you? Who do you want to become? Are you sure you want to go through with this? Will you be happy? I felt an essence seeping out of my bones, my heart, and my spirit, and my answer made itself known.

Originally published in the Waltonian, Eastern University's Student Newspaper.