To everyone who has a clear mind of their own identities, how did you know this was who you wanted to be?

The concept of struggling to discover yourself. Whether if it’s figuring out your purpose, style, your body, or who you want to be known as, this topic is really difficult. Everyone has questioned at least once in their lives about one’s self concept. Who am I, what am I here to do, and where do I want to go?

I’ve been dealing with this issue for a while because honestly how can you fully be sure of yourself? There’s a lot of self-growth and development that goes into figuring out who you are and to me, I’ve always been unsure. It has never been black and white because I feel like I somewhat know myself, but every time I take quizzes about my personality, morals, or my interests I rarely know how to answer. I’m always doubting my answer and so my mind is just filled with meaningless whispers. As if there are several voices saying what is right/wrong and it’s difficult to decipher if I’m listening to my own voice or not. There’s no easy way to spread out all of the questions I have of myself down on a table. I’m a person filled with curiosity and I do not want to leave these questions unanswered.

Yet I realize that everything requires time, so I most likely am not ready to answer those three previous questions as of right now. I know that some day I will have my answers, but for now it’s just a period of nonsense. My goals in life are vague and I barely understand myself enough to know what hobbies I wish to pursue. Everyone says to take advantage of opportunities in school, but I don’t want to aim without a meaning or purpose. Otherwise, I won’t enjoy wherever I’m headed.

To be honest, I feel like I’m rushing but I just want to know when my journey of learning about myself will start. I want to conquer the battles I’ll have to face in finding myself early on because I want to enjoy the best of it. I just want to know myself so eagerly. I want to know what kind of person I am, how I face things on my own, and what I really want to do.

It all reminds me of a novel I read a couple weeks ago, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I took note of this quote in the book because his adventure of discovering himself really relates to me currently.

“It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”

–Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I agree that my thoughts keep me busy often, especially when I feel like I know little about myself. I figured that just like Siddhartha, if I’m going to sit here and contemplate about my identity for hours I might as well do something about it. Unlike him however, I’m not able to grab the courage to leave everything behind me and start anew by myself. I do want to try exploring more though and I truly believe in myself. So even if things don’t fit for me the first time just like this character, then I’m sure that the pieces of my puzzle will fall in place once I realize I’m ready. My experiences from birth until death will not be meaningless because they all turn into knowledge to learn more about myself. That’s one of the greater lessons I’ve learned from this book and that I’ll never be in this gray area of confusion forever. Perhaps self-realization will flow right next to me just like the river that spoke Om in the book.