The Process of Losing Ourself

Becoming who we truly are requires the greatest amount of change.
(Michael Meade)

I was born a very talkative, eloquent, playful, and happy little girl, always smiley and happy, asking a lot of questions and being curious. I didn’t go to a preschool or kindergarten so I grew up this way until I went to primary school. I was shocked when I discovered that most children in my class were shy, not daring to express themselves, and quiet.  Soon I realized how I was standing out of the crowd and I wanted to be just the same as everyone else. I therefore pretended to by shy. I didn’t dare to talk and also hated myself for standing out physically as well by being so tall.

I acted timidly and stopped being myself. So this is how we lose ourselves.  We join a group and we want to fit in. We want to be like everyone else in order to have the feeling of belonging and security. We don’t want to act differently so people think that we are weird, or even worse, people want to expel us from this group.  We have this fear of being expelled; we have this fear of not belonging; we want to be accepted; we want to be loved.

In this process of seeking belonging, acceptance, and love from the external world, slowly, we lose ourselves. We don’t dare to express ourselves. We don’t dare to be ourselves, and slowly, we don’t even know who we are, and what we want.  We just follow the trend of this society to fit in, to seek the feeling of belonging, and at the same time, we lose the ability to connect to ourselves, to find out what we really want, and who we really are.  How can we be happy when we don’t even know who we are, what we want, and seek validation from others?  We don’t even stand by ourselves.

Of course we are not going to be happy living life this way; of course we feel lost and depressed.  We can only be happy and be creative when we are true to ourself.  We cannot be happy to be someone else. Do you know yourself?  Do you connect with yourself?  Do you know what you really want? I hope you do!  It’s a process to discover our true self.  If you don’t know yet, that’s fine too.  Soon you are going to walk on this most beautiful journey of discovering yourself!  Have fun!

By Su Zhen