There have been numerous times throughout my life when I found myself questioning why I felt I had to do or be certain things for the people around me. What I realized is that in this day and age, teens and young adults are searching for people to tell them what is socially acceptable so that we can follow that example and transform ourselves into that.
It is human nature to want to be loved and appreciated by others, even if that means changing who we are to fit into this cookie-cutter mold of what is seen as “cool” in popular culture. We are defining our self-worth by how many followers we have on Twitter and how many likes we get on Instagram. When we don’t have the socially acceptable amount of either of these we are seen as unpopular, or not worthy of hanging out with a certain crowd.
I, like many other teens, fell into this societal trap. I looked to my friends and my grades to define how worthy I was. In my senior year of highschool, and on into my freshman year of college, my feeling of self-worth began to go down as the things I’d let define my self-worth began to fade away as I entered this transition period.
This feeling of inadequacy led me to struggle with feeling alone and like I wasn’t good enough for my friends, or for the university that I’d been accepted to. That’s when I found a little gold coin and a small gem that had been given to me by my senior year English teacher.
On our last day of class he’d given us these two things as a reminder to us of how priceless we truly were. As I remembered the story that was told to me that explained the two small objects sitting in my palm, a small smile formed on my lips.
The coin, represented the idea of monetary value that we typically associate with people. He gave us a coin because all around the world coins are used as payment methods and hold a certain value for each coin. This is how the world views us, and because of that, how we view ourselves. Each of us dubbed with a price tag and the higher the number on it, the more important and loved we are. For example, Beyonce would have a pretty hefty number on her price tag, whereas little old me would probably have an exponentially smaller number on mine.
What my teacher wanted us to realize though, was that our worth exceeds any amount that can be put on a price tag. That’s where the gem comes in. Before a diamond becomes the beautiful stone that we see on jewelry all around us it is nothing more than an ugly rock. Now, what he was saying isn’t that we are all ugly and we have to work to be beautiful. No, what he was getting at is that no matter what the outside has to say about who we are, it will always be what’s on the inside that counts and what makes us priceless.
The world may continuously tell you to be the coin and seek out ways to increase your value, but we must always remember to be the gem and not seek out our value.
As Khalil Gibran once said, “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” Never forget that, and always remember to be a gem in a world full of coins.
