My main goal for this year is to be more honest – not in the sense that I will now spend my time judging the people around me under the guise of “keeping it real”, but my hope is to be more honest in how I communicate my feelings all while remaining true to myself. Transparency is something our generation seems to struggle with. Whether it’s putting on a front for social media to impress peers, or hiding in the shadows, afraid of what people would say if they knew who you truly were – it is imperative that we as a society learn the ways in which remaining silent is detrimental and embrace the liberating benefits of being transparent.
The first part of my goal, as I stated earlier, is to honestly communicate my feelings. I’ve noticed that people who are seen as the “peacemaker” or “conflict resolver” tend to share the same trait of not communicating their feelings. Some feel that their opinions may upset others or disturb the peace so they mask them with smiles and cooperation. Experiencing this first hand, I have decided to take off the mask and allow myself the freedom to openly feel and express my emotions. When you’ve worn a mask for so long, it becomes your safe haven and your protector from all things bad in the world but, what it really is, is a crutch. My crutch let me remain silent about my own feelings while allowing others to have their way with my emotions. There’s a cliche but encouraging word I’ve been hearing about the year 2020 and how we ought to have “20/20 vision” in the year 2020. One thing I learned last year is that you can’t see clearly through a mask, regardless of what you believe it is protecting you from. Removing your masks, whether they act as a crutch, or a cover-up, allows you to be authentically yourself and express your feelings regardless of how others may think or perceive them.
Another part of my goal is to be more true to myself. In being true to myself, I am living out the life that I was chosen to live and being who God called me to be. It is difficult to be true to yourself when you don’t know who you truly are. When you have no real foundation or semblance of your identity, you are easily molded by the traits and behaviors you see in the world and begin to pass off someone else’s identity as your own. The danger of doing that – of embracing aspects of everyone else’s identity but your own – will only perpetuate a distorted self-image, making you even more unrecognizable. Staying true to yourself reinforces who you are, which is impossible to do when you are burying your identity in order to be more like the people around you. Staying true to yourself is recognizing what you need and want and not abandoning those personal standards and preferences. It’s ensuring that you’re doing everything in your power to be the person you know yourself to be, and more importantly, a person that you can look in the mirror and recognize.
