Your words. Your own words.
I remember the first time I tried to formulate this sense, this feeling, this awareness. I needed no words to express it to myself, but then there was my friend telling me how insufficient, how inadequate she felt as a student. She told me of her failures and shortcomings and I struggled with this thought, this sense, this feeling I had that would not be shaped and fitted properly into language.
I found it hard, maybe harder than I would if our teacher did not stand beside us listening in on the conversation. If he hadn’t listen to me trying to say that it is infinitely more important to be a good “you”, than to be a good student, I might have found it easier to find the words.
But this was exactly what I was trying to say.
That being you, that succeeding at being you, that being good at being you, is far more important than being a good student, a good person, a good human. That fulfilling your own potential is far more important than satisfying the ideas of others, of any “others”.
I blurted out a bundle of words to my friend that day. They might have communicated my thoughts, likely they didn’t. We moved on to another subject, our teacher drifted away. Did he mind? Did he mind me saying than my being me, than my friend being her, is of far greater importance than us being good students of his?
I did not believe he minded that at all.
Because he knew that too.
