The Missing Piece

As I sit here typing this I am ready to tell you the best piece of advice that you will hear. Yep in my short time on this earth (let’s face it, 20 years living is a relatively short amount of time) I have found out that being yourself is the best option in life. Okay, I can hear the people in the comment sections and the little voices in the back of your minds rising up already; give me a second to explain the presumed obvious. For years we have been told the same lesson from cheesy after school specials, yet none of us listen.

It seems that everywhere you turn there is some overly repeated message about staying true to yourself, being honest, blah blah blah. Well the entire thing is repeated, contrived, and cliché. It's for that very reason that I want to get that message across in a different way, one that people will hopefully listen to. So for the length of time that it takes you to read this short piece, analyze and believe in my words, because this is 100% the truth. In this world, you need to remain totally and completely dedicated to yourself. You need to believe in the strength of your own will and how you can change the world.

I have never touted myself as an overly optimistic person. I have my moments of pessimism, but at the same time I have moments of optimism and this is it. When I tell you to believe in yourself and keep chasing your dreams: do it. The world is full of people who are creative wonderful individuals. Each person is something completely different, they bring a different skill or point of view to whatever they are doing. Think of the world and whatever you do as a big puzzle and the individual people in it as the pieces (I’ll take a moment to congratulate myself on coming up with that metaphor). Everyone’s experiences, skills and general being make up the edges of the pieces and we all fit somewhere.

Now I don’t want this to turn into some ra-ra pep rally speech about how everyone is beautiful no matter what, that’s not what I am getting at. Some of you out there are actually pretty ugly. All of that aside, know that you are unique and fit in somewhere. The talents that you bring as a person are truly unique so you need to have faith in them. We all think differently, move differently, etc. Yet, people around the world still want to fit in. Honestly, that is pretty stupid. I cannot wrap my mind around it; why when you are an individual would you ever want to be like someone else? The world is a very wide and open place and if everyone living in it was the same, a carbon copy of each other, well then that would be pretty awful.

It’s like that old episode of Fairly OddParents (be honest, you watched that show when you were younger) where Timmy wishes that everyone looked the same. If you don’t remember the episode or didn’t watch it, basically Timmy learns that looking the same is a terrible choice. Now imagine if everyone looked and acted the same - go ahead I will wait. Now that your imaginations have been fully used, you can see that it isn’t a great decision.

Everyone looking alike and thinking alike would get dull at the very least. I need everyone who reads this to realize that being an individual is the right way. Know that being your individual puzzle piece is what you need. The world needs more individuals because when that puzzle is completed it will take all the wonderful pieces that we are.