Bearing an untold story inside you

One of the biggest fallacies I used to find myself falling into time and time again is the belief that with the right amount of discipline, soul-searching, and lessons learned, I would be able to find myself. It was as if a certain amount of growth and layers shed would lead me to this golden version of myself, an individual with admirable habits and a desirable personality. Not necessarily true perfection, but chasing an interpretation of perfection that only held value in my consciousness. I would not say I had a light-bulb moment, a eureka discovery that helped me come to the realization that “finding myself” wasn’t defined by discovering a pre-existing, fixed identity, but rather actively shaping and building who I wanted to be through deliberate actions and choices.

Finding yourself does not exist. It is a hopeless endeavour, eventually a roundabout chase that will only leave you biting your own tail. If you can not find yourself, then you have bigger problems than the discovery of personal identity because you are here. You have always been right here. You have to stop finding yourself, and you have to start creating yourself. Take agency of yourself and your actions. Start by defining your own values and goals. What do you believe in? What do you like? What do you want to achieve in life? Only when you can identify these objectives can you begin evolving into the person you aspire to be. 

There is not much to be said, not much progress to be made, in passively searching for a lost, authentic self. Identity is dynamic; you are not a lost object, looking to be found. You are a person in constant evolution; creating yourself gives you the power to design the life you want in an authentic way, rather than waiting for life to happen to you. The problem with the concept of “finding yourself” is that it implies there is some other version of you hiding away, waiting to be unearthed. But we are not video games, waiting to unlock levels in our lives after acquiring the right amount of points or coins. When you begin to approach life with the intention and focus on building the future that you want, you will find that you have been here all along. 

The trap of finding yourself is the constant passivity. At first glance, it may seem empowering, but in reality, you’re clinging to the lazy river of your everyday routine, hoping for some external force that will finally reveal your “true self” to you. When I began to view my decisions as a way to create myself, I was able to take control back. Instead of blindly searching, I prioritized making intentional choices, shifting my mindset from discovering a hidden identity to actively constructing the one that I truly wanted. I stopped being at the mercy of my circumstances, understanding and accepting any faults I made, and turning them into a learning and growing experience. I am slowly becoming the architect of my own life. 

When we go from the attempts at finding ourselves to the inception of creating ourselves, one of the catalysts for fulfillment is the exploration of hobbies. A huge part of identity now, especially in social media culture, are hobbies. What makes you unique from other people? What are your passions? What do you do in your free time? How do you pass your days outside of work? What we do outside of earning an income has quickly become the different pieces that make up our personality, our individuality. When I think of my identity and what I attribute to myself, what comes to mind are my hobbies; I’m a reader, a writer, a runner, an artist. I’m quick to jump to labels because it’s the easiest and most accessible identifier. But lately, I have found that my ongoing goal of creating myself has turned something fluid, my personality and my identity, into something more rigid, as if the different parts of me are supposed to fit in boxes. 

The existence of labels on hobbies has evolved even further with short-form and long-form content. Interests are divided and segmented. Whether you’re on Bookstagram (book Instagram), RunTok (running TikTok), or gaming on YouTube, we have pigeonholed our interests into specific niches on social media, and in turn, have turned what should be a simple, enjoyable pastime into a commodifiable market. When you find a community online with a shared interest, it can hastily devolve into a game of comparison. Suddenly, you’re insecure that you don’t read as many books as other people, you’re not quite as fast as those marathoners, and you don’t own the best of the best gadgets for your hobby. When you begin to feel pressured by external judgment and the lack of resources or even skills of others, it can transform a source of personal fulfillment into a performance. The “all or nothing” mindset that the Internet has groomed us into defaulting to bleeds into the subconscious. It’s easy to fall into the trap of comparison to others who are more advanced, detracting from your enjoyment and the real reason why you even decided to pick up that hobby in the first place. It could lead to a fixed mindset, where the belief that a label is permanent prevents you from learning something else. Social media and modern-day culture have turned leisure into work. Sociologist Steven Gelber said it best, describing hobbies as "the borderland that is beyond play but not yet employment."

I enjoy being a writer, a reader, being a runner, and an artist. I enjoy identifying myself with clear labels because that’s just the way my mind operates. It may not work like that for everyone else. There are times when I find myself in the pitfalls of comparison, but focusing on the process of what I enjoy and not the product helps me to stay grounded. You do not need to be a reader; you can simply be a human who likes to read. It sounds interchangeable, like it wouldn’t make any difference, but with the connotations that social media has placed behind labels, it can truly heavily impact your mindset. The hardest part of all of it is to give up who you think you should be or who you need to be. You never need to find yourself. You were always there.