Advanced Essay #3 + [Finding yourself vs. Creating yourself.]
Finding yourself vs. Creating yourself.
I often hear people say “Throughout childhood you spend most of your time trying to find yourself.” They say this is the reason that childhood is so hard, but to that I disagree. To me, the idea of finding yourself is synonymous with a having a destiny. I believe that you spend your life creating yourself and your future, it is not found, and you are not born with specific purpose. There is no short cuts in doing that because creating and molding the person you want to be takes hard work. Naturally you are born with a certain amount of personality and talent through genetics, but success is created after you are born, not before. The search for real self is fiction, your personality is not waiting to be stumbled upon one day. If the search for true self was reality, when it is finally found you would become static, without any real reason to be ambitious, because anything out of that comfort zone would be considered “Not being yourself.” Although having your own opinions are unique to the specific person, having a destiny is not real. Everyday you create yourself with thoughts, actions, and dreams. It is a life experiment to mold what you like and what you don’t like. The rest is up to the person, and the people who influence that person. The people that influence you play a extremely vital role in creating yourself. What is considered as finding yourself, is misconstrued with having society’s restrictions define you. The influence that society has on a person's spirit is stronger than anyone would like to admit, and even the broadest categorization of humans are made by our society. This is shown in the article from The New York Times "Race and Racial Identity Are Social Constructs.” The article states that:
Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.
This proves the idea that society has created broad guidelines for people's lives. I believe that these constrictions make people afraid to overstep boundaries for fear of “not being yourself.”
The concept of creating yourself is driven by self perception, and believing that you can, or cannot achieve something with hard work, and not being naturally gifted. Will Smith, a extremely successful actor once said “I've always viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guy's sleeping? I'm working.” Will smith sums up my thesis of creating yourself by implying that he was never given a particular special talent, but because he worked hard and believed in himself he created a legendary career. This correlates with creating yourself because he was not blessed with a destiny, and did not wait to find himself, instead he worked hard to make his average talent great. When you are old enough to think for yourself, you began to challenge all ideas. The drive to experiment with things is created, and you begin to judge what you do and don’t like. I believe that society constructs people's feelings of identity and belonging by years of watering down what is normal. Society holds a lot of power in some people's eyes. But no matter who you are, there are repercussions of the opinions of others. Some people choose to fit in and just be normal, because that is easier. Others choose to go down the road of resistance where you experiment with things and decide whether something is for you or is not. These societal pressures are shown in The Great Gatsby "His nostrils turned to me in an interesting way” (p.71). I understand you're looking for a business negotiation." The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me: "Oh, no," he exclaimed, " this isn't the man." "no?" Mr.Wolfshiem seemed disappointed. "This is just a friend. I told you we'd talk about that some other time." " I beg your pardon," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "I had a wrong man." This shows that Nick did not fold to society pressures to do something that he did not want to do. It is not that he didn’t take the opportunity because it wasn't his destiny, but because he had created his morals, and was emotionally strong enough to deny society’s pressures.
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