Jan Amanda

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

So often we forget that we are not shaped by the people in our life who attempt to assign us meaning. We just passively fall into line and allow others to define our history and our future, never once giving a second thought of what we can do to shape ourselves.

Once I gave a student an art assignment with basic rules to follow. She took the instructions and simply used it as a basic guideline, using her own colours, her own drawings, and essentially, her own rules. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Because I wanted it that way." She didn't let my instructions stand in the way of what she wanted out of it, and I could only smile at her small, yet important, assertion of identity.

I've consistently lived life in the context of other people's narratives, figuring out how I can be a better version of myself based on how others reacted to whatever I did. However, as I stand at the precipice of 20 and 30, I have come to understand that I need to shape my identity based on what I, myself want out of my own life. Constantly waiting to find myself, I have forgotten that I am already here - I just need to pick up that brush, and start painting.