“4/28/16, 5:37 PM
Should I always be myself or change at times?”
I was peeking through my journal and the above entry really stood out. It’s a critical question I still don’t have an answer to, and I worry that I’ll always be in conflict over. I can’t remember the afternoon I wrote it, but I’m willing to wager a bet that I was sitting by myself in the living room of Hamzeh and I’s 28th floor apartment in Denver. The apartment was absolutely beautiful- for most it was even more awe-inspiring than 2210 (for Teta and I, nothing compared to 2210). You could see Denver’s growing skyline beautifully, and in the far distance the Rocky Mountains were in visual perception. When the sun set, everything turned a magnificent orange color; and as the sun took shelter behind the mountains, rays of light struck the skyscrapers. Powerful lines of orange came from behind the mountain, turning everything orange. As the night settled, the liveliness of the streets, the diversity of colorful artificial lights and the moon, turned the apartment into the “it place” – the place to be.
But it was honestly a difficult time for me as I had begun to understand the many contradictions in life. I wanted my old apartment back and couldn’t forgive myself for what I thought was an act of abandonment. I wanted to be in apartment #2210, and not apartment #2805, no matter how much more technically impressive the latter was.
I was trying to make sense of my differing and commonly irreconcilable wants and needs; I fell into a profound state of confusion that caused inactivity and intense sadness. Some paradoxes cannot be resolved; they just do not make any sense, and you’ll always find yourself engaging in superficially fallacious thoughts. I don’t like to think in ‘what-ifs’, but had I been myself a lot of what went astray in my life would still be properly aligned.
I changed. I felt like I had to change. Change for the appeasement of others, change for the future, change in order to make more money, change to deal with this world’s evil, change to keep up, and so on. It was a very forcible kind of change, and I could no longer recognize myself as clearly. I knew who I was, and recognized who I was forcing myself to change to, and the two versions of me were not equal. The real me I found to be much more pleasant, easygoing, productive, and ‘good’.
Life is all about sacrifice, that’s something I’ve confidently affirmed over the years. In order to be myself, I’ll have to give up a lot. I might have to sacrifice quick money, an abundance of acquaintances, comfort, and/or an assortment of things. But, I truly believe that what I have to gain makes the sacrifices worth it. I’m open to change, and that’s something everyone knows about me. My favorite quote (which I had learned in one of my philosophy classes) is “nothing endures but change.” I understand that change is a given, but I should seek out a reformation of my real personality, instead of a formulation of a fake personality. There’s no promising that I’ll stick to this as the world sometimes has a way of swaying us towards what we don’t want. We don’t always get to choose who we become or who we are. However, I have relentlessly pledged that I’ll resist the magnetic force that may push me towards the wrong direction, and that is best done by sacrificing the source or sources of magnetism.