Most people tend to define “being true to yourself” as selecting a specific set of morals, beliefs, standards, and strictly sticking to them in any and every situation. However, I have an issue with this interpretation of the saying.
Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” I think Mr. Churchill was onto something when he made that statement. Too many people limit themselves and stunt their personal growth when they say that they will always or never do something or be someone. Life is about growth, and growth requires change. If you expect yourself to be the same person throughout the duration of your life, what’s the adventure in being a free, unrestrained, living and breathing, soulful human being? In order to get the most out of life, we must open ourselves up to the approach of not knowing exactly who we are, what we want, where we will be in the future, and what to expect from ourselves because it is such a gray area of opportunity that should not be degraded to a stereotype.
This idea is applicable to all people at any age, but especially to those around the college age. The human brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s to early 30s -- so if we are physically still changing, why are we telling ourselves that we shouldn’t in other aspects? The stress derived from the pressure to “find yourself” and figure out what to do with your life is a package deal that comes with the college experience, but I’m here to tell you that I think you should relax about it. So strive to silence that unnecessarily concerning voice in the back of your head if you haven’t decided on a major quite yet, or if you haven’t figured out what career you want to pursue, or if you find yourself feeling emotions or thinking thoughts that you wouldn’t have expected from yourself at an earlier time.
Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote in his poem "The Coming of Wisdom with Time," “Though leaves are many, the root is one; through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun; now I may wither into the truth.” In this piece, the leaves represent all the different “yous” that you are throughout your life and all the changes that you go through. But that in the grand scheme of it all, you still have one, single, sole root, which is who you truly are. This is a metaphor expressing that no matter what all you go through or how much you stray from personas you once embodied, you can still remain true to yourself as long as you’re constantly doing what you feel is best for you at that given time and pursuing what you believe will make you the happiest you can be in that moment. None of us are capable of accurately predicting what will happen to us or where we will end up later down the road, so use this uncertainty as a gift and allow yourself to be vulnerable in the sense that you can only control your actions at this exact point, and to dwell on your current desires as opposed to worrying whether or not your choices will be dissatisfying later on.
So in a nutshell, you do you, even (and especially) when you don’t know who you are.
