Perfection & Passion

How do I figure out who I am?

I feel like I look around and everyone’s very much themselves, very certain about who they are and what they care about and believe, and I try to pretend the same, but I just really don’t know and I’m really frustrated about it, but also kind of worried that maybe I’m missing something that you have to have to be passionate about things.

Sorry to unload, but it’s just really frustrating, and I’m hoping you can give me some ideas or point me in the right direction, because I feel like I’m missing something here.

T

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Hey T-

You’re not alone in feeling like everyone else has their lives together, and that you, for some reason, didn’t get the memo explaining how it all works.

This is just a part of life. And though it’s more common for some people, and at certain ages, it’s a feeling we can all experience at any moment, for any reason, and it’s okay.

It’s not true, but it’s okay.

We are incentivized by myriad mechanisms throughout society, throughout the economy, throughout our social groups, to seem as if we have our ducks in a row.

Part of the rationale behind this type of performance is that many of us are told “fake it till you make it” when we’re young, and thus, our exterior facade is not indicative of our interior reality.

But it’s also a protective measure: we don’t want to seem like we’re the only ones failing to kick ass, and as a result, we put up a veil that makes it seem as if things are perfect, when in fact, the truth is almost always more complicated than that.

This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to feel more in control of your own destiny, or that it’s impossible to understand more about how the world fits together and where you exist within that larger system.

It’s just that even when you reach that point, there will be nuance, there will be imperfections; even if you’ll tend to see them more clearly than everyone else.

Also important to note is that as we grow, we never reach the end of knowledge, the end of understanding, or the highest-possible point of our potential. Such a place doesn’t exist.

Each new horizon we overtake merely introduces us to another horizon.

Which is intimidating, but it’s also probably for the best—otherwise we’d reach the end of the “game” and have nothing to do with ourselves. This way, we always have more we can pursue and achieve, but we can also feel okay about not being perfect and not having everything under control; because that’s impossible.

Social media, and our communication tools overall, tend to show us a highly refined and processed version of real life. We’re rewarded when we behave in particular ways, attract certain types of attention, and keep others (and ourselves) tapping and clicking and “engaging” in a manner that is beneficial for the relevant, time- and focus-sponging business models.

The consequences of these incentives are many, but most relevant to this conversation is that they often encourage us to portray versions of ourselves that gloss over perhaps-vital details, so that a more palatable, clickable, simplified-and-flattened version of us becomes the most public and accessible version.

This is part of why the grass always seems to be greener on the other side of the fence: we’re comparing our complex and imperfect internal realities with the polished, internet-ready surrealities of others. Which is not only an unfair comparison, but also a bit like comparing apples to horseshoes: they’re completely different things with incomparable metrics of success.

Regarding figuring out who you are:

New aspects of your character are unearthed as you learn new things, visit new places, meet new people, and expose yourself to new experiences.

This doesn’t imply that we should all become novelty-chasers, but it does mean that the more you can open yourself up to new ideas, new perspectives, new people, and new opportunities, the more likely you are to find that, huh, you like salted caramel chocolate, and interesting, you have a knack for illustration, and wow, you actually really enjoy the pace of life in Scandinavian countries.

You’ll be unlikely to learn such things about yourself if you seldom try new foods, new hobbies, or new locales on for size.

It makes sense, then, if you’re feeling a bit rudderless and unsure of who you are, to fill your life with opportunities to grow. That’s how you discover things you might enjoy.

And when you do identify such things, invest time and effort in them if you want to cultivate them into passions. This process can take a while to bear fruit, but true passions seldom emerge spontaneously and are almost always the consequence of a spark that you coax into a soul-warming flame.