You and Your Element
I'm sure you've heard it before in school: "You need to find your element," and I'm sure that most of you have either agreed or were in total confusion because you were listening to this demand at the age of 13-17. Our counselors, our teachers, our parents all insist that we find this "element" but rarely tell us how or when or why (besides possibly college), and although in theory it sounds easy, the more you try the harder the actual task becomes because "finding your element" is not just about slapping together a couple of profound quotes and calling it the embodiment of your existence: "finding your element" is finding who you are in the context that you have grown up in.
As human beings we're all rough drafts that we have to continuously work on and think about so that we advance not only as an individual but also as a society, and being this rough draft is nothing shameful: it's quite the opposite actually because it gives us the chance to make mistakes and learn from them. We aren't perfect and that's the beauty of it all: mistakes are designed to create a learning experience and a reminder for the next time -- not to be a shaming technique.
Recently I realized something about myself: I realized I do not love myself as much as I should and I thus attempt at confiding in others in order to gain the acceptance and respect that I oftentimes deprive myself of. It's not that I'm self deprecating or self-hating; it means that I don't give myself as much permission to love myself in fear of narcissism and the realization of my brokenness. But through a recent turn of events in my life, causing myself to re-evaluate my status as a person, I decided to give more effort to love myself as a human being and to learn to appreciate that fact. I tell others it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to depend on those around you, but I'm the last person to actually take my own advice and I feel like such a hypocrite whenever I do that. But in thinking about "finding my element" and what that phrase actually meant, I was able to realize that for outside of college, that phrase meant that I have to find myself as a person and to find what I love to do and not what others want me to do for them.
Finding myself and finding where I fit in are the most important things to do before anything else because anything without meaning is empty.