The Overwhelming Stiffness of Becoming YOU
March 12th, 2025
Writer: Marcela Batlle Cestero
Editor: Zoe Gellert
Growing up, I was tormented by the idea of “being yourself.”
At track meets, in school, and in life, you are taught to stay in your lane, keep your eyes forward and never look anywhere but the finish line - tunnel vision. The world praises those who move in a straight line, those who don’t waver, don’t question, don’t get distracted. We’ve all heard it and attempted to imitate it, especially in that first week of January when the calendar resets and we feel the sudden urge to prevent every little mistake made in the past year from happening again. All at once. And so I tried.
I trained myself to believe that being my own person meant only looking ahead, finding an identity that was purely mine, untouched by the people around me. That absolute independence fostered detachment. That individuality meant resisting influence. This conversation has been exhausted; yet, it never dies — because it is always approached in black and white.
But then, one day, I caught myself hesitating before adding a song to my playlist, because a friend had introduced me to it. I questioned whether I actually liked the movie I had just watched, or if I was just absorbing someone else’s enthusiasm. I thought about my music taste, ambitions, humor, and beliefs — every part of me that I had assumed was quintessentially me — and suddenly, I didn’t know anymore.
How much of myself was truly mine? What interest stemmed solely from me? Not from my new celebrity fixation or from seeing a girl on my TikTok For You Page glowing in her authentic, quirky outfit.
We carry this creeping fear of being too much like someone else. We fear imitation, even when we so often fall victim to it. We fear having interests planted in us by a friend or a sibling, a conversation overheard in passing. The idea of being shaped by something outside of ourselves is almost embarrassing. If we like something that’s already trending, we are basic. If someone recommends a book, a restaurant, a political stance, and we agree, we feel the need to pause and assess if we actually believe this or if it's just the poison of influence. The journey to self-discovery is always framed as something singular, as if originality is the highest form of existence. As if the moment something has a trace of someone else, it no longer holds the essence of individuality.
But I think that’s a lie we’ve manufactured in our picked-apart-minds. Because no one runs a race alone. No one walks through life untouched.
Maybe looking to the side isn’t a sign of distraction or weakness. Maybe it’s just awareness. Perhaps it’s seeing how the people around you move and pick up what resonates, while letting go of what doesn’t, to build yourself not in isolation, but in connection. I think about all of the things I love: the books I’ve read, the music I’ve held close, the habits I’ve formed and I realize that even if they started as echoes of someone else, they are still mine now. I felt something when I heard them and chose to keep them. The way you integrate them into your being, that is what makes it yours. I think about the people around me, too. Somehow, they’ve picked up pieces of me without either of us realizing it.
Being yourself does not require severing every connection to what inspires you. Life isn’t a race to outrun the person beside you. It’s a race we run together, each of us carrying traces of the people we’ve met along the way. I like to think that’s a good thing. In the end, maybe we were never meant to be just ourselves. Maybe we were meant to be a sort of fusion, initially separated fragments of every laugh, song and late-night conversation that ever meant something to us. I don't mind looking to the side anymore. I want to recognize the rhythm of the people running beside me — not to copy them, but learn, adapt, and understand. I want to be pushed forward and shaped not just by my own will but also by the wind currents of those around me. So look to the side. Because becoming yourself was never meant to be a solo journey.