Who am I? " Because of this kind of question, I never give more time to answer it. After turning twenty, this question becomes important for me considering the number 20 is the gate to maturity in life that requires me to survive.
"Am I authentic or fake?" Approximately that is the further formulation of the question. Upon that question, I tried to see who I was.
Sinks
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After these 20 years, the thing I really didn't find was myself. The manifestation of this self-loss is my inability to manifest and show an authentic self. My behavior, speech, and thoughts are completely dependent on the environment around me. I was filled with fakes. I drowned.
I call this condition self-immersion. Drowning means that everything that I show outside of myself is unable to show my authentic, original self.
Outside influences dominate everything I show outside of myself. As a result, my actions, words, and thoughts do not represent me.
I experienced the drowning in many things, whether it was in routine, in formality, system, work, campus, family, and so on. On campus, for example, I would rather be hanging out late with my friends, rather than going to the lecture hall early alone.
Or in the dormitory where I live, for example, I prefer to obey the leadership, even though it is against the principles of life that I hold. There are many other examples that show how my individuality was lost in the midst of the crowd.
What is shown here ? What I show on the outside is what comes from the outside, not what comes from within. I am the fake me.
Last week, for example, I went to church after being told by my dormitory father to have to worship. I left sleepy. I stayed up all night. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have gone to church and chose to continue sleeping.
Do I individually appear there? I think hardly, not even at all. Everything that I have experienced so far has only happened in a collective sphere, of which I am only one of the smallest units in it.
My individuality - whom I held dearly - was drowned in the bodies of the crowd. Heidegger was right, I was drowning in some sort of crowd.
The experience above is a manifestation of my apparent immersion, meaning that it can be observed by others. Not to mention what is invisible, which only I know myself.
I want to tell you this one thing. For me, and this has only been formulated recently, the most important thing about education is its quality. Whether it makes you happy or not, what matters is the quality. And I was wrong on that point. Too wrong.
I went to the best high school in my area. And I never dreamed that one day I could go to school there. My difficulty there was not a matter of the demands that I had to fulfill, especially academic matters. Because especially with these various demands, I finally managed to survive with the life choices I made later.
However, it is about the meaning of life that I find. About feeling happy and unhappy. Regarding feelings of likes and dislikes. About at home and not at home.
And during my education there, I was never really happy and never at home. Of course I made this confession after years of hiding it. That is what I am.
What do I want to say. People like me are not even able to realize the most basic urges and needs in me - even for years as in my story above, which is about the meaning of life. Why am I there?
What do I get after being there all these years? After being thrown there, where will my life next? And I never tried to find those answers. I seemed to feel comfortable with drowning myself. Well, maybe you too.
Someone in front of the mirror
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What's really missing? I lost self-reflection. Losing self, as I emphasized so much above, starts with losing reflection on the self. I lose my time standing in front of the mirror and looking at someone there.
Someone who is very foreign at first, but is actually a part of me looking at him. I am too busy looking at myself by measures outside of me.
I see myself happy, when my friends are happy. I find myself deeply religious when I flock to church with people who share my faith.
I see myself as successful, when the community where I work is successful. I see myself as successful academically, for example, when I see my classmates who pass with satisfactory grades. Again, the authentic self is self that continues to reflect on itself.
The most important thing about reflecting is giving time to yourself. So far, I haven't given myself enough time.
I just drowned in the currents of most people. I put the interests of others ahead of my own basic needs. Altruism, however, endangers my individuality if lived without giving myself time.
It is naive to say that when I write this article, I will completely transform into an authentic person. Not. This is a long process, it even continues throughout my life journey.
At least the first thing I do and you do is become aware of that immersion. We can try to be ourselves slowly.