(An ODE to) Honesty & being oneself
What an adventure life is….if we are so fortunate to live a long life, what discoveries each additonal year brings!
I personally LOVE GETTING OLDER! Not b/c my hair turns grey (seriously dreading the day where I’ll have to dye my roots 😛 ) BUUUUUT b/c my mind is gathering experiences and I FIND MYSELF GROWING UP AND BECOMING A MATURE ADULT!!!??? It is so weird but I have noticed and enjoyed that my thoughts are more well, thoughtful or how I can put this, well more developed and nuanced than when I was a younger adult, like fresh out of university. Now that I have worked for several years and actually have diverse job & life experiences, I finally find myself to be a somewhat rational human being 😛 I said SOMEWHAT b/c I know that sometimes, I am non-sensical and WRONG and well, actually an unpleasant person but isn’t that the ‘joy’ of being a human being? We are all flawed and NO ONE IS PERFECT. Whewf, low/no pressure!
Imperfect Cathy: squinty not smiley 😛
So if that is not like super abstract, let me try to confuse you even more. (To readers: if you don’t understand what I’m saying, it is NOT a problem b/c I think I have an idea/theme to share here, but as I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, my style is WORD VOMIT without drafts so this is just stuff that collects in my head until I can write it down.)
So anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyy, let’s talk about honesty. I think the link/connection/relation to my rambling introduction above is that, as one grows OLDER, one knows oneself better aka (also known as) matures as a person and as one matures, then one is more comfortable at being honest in one’s conduct with oneself and with others.
Now does that make more sense? (To tell the truth, speaking in the third-person / ‘oneself’ format is kinda vague.
So let me attempt to break it down even further in a more personal way: HONESTY means accepting YOURSELF. As a younger person, I was less confident but in the past few years, I have found myself making connections among a lot of my life choices and have seen the commonalities more clearly. For example (#1), I have loved learning French for a very long time & then I discovered that my grandfather who passed away before I was born was a great lover of French songs and poetry. But my mom is not a French-speaker; she just remembers hearing her dad sing to her in Vietnam (a country with links to France through colonialism) while she was young. BUT then I speak French b/c I was born and raised in Canada, another French-speaking country. Another example (#2) is that being a language-minded person, my passion for French led me to want to learn Vietnamese more seriously after university b/c as a kid, I had gone to VNese school for a few years, but it just didn’t stick. The French grammar and syntax made me keen to learn VNese grammar rules. (Yes, I know this is like UBER DORKY.) And since I also had a degree in International Relations (IR), which made me want to work in developing countries, the French + IR background made Vietnam the perfect place to move to—one where I could learn VNese and also work in humanitarian or development organizations. So off I went and the rest is HISTORY! I got to do IR and be linguistically fulfilled and also found pockets of French in VN so I was really using all my skills at the same time…it was awesome 🙂
OK so I hope the examples clarify this concept of life connections that become more obvious to you as you mature/grow up and as time passes.
So basically, I’ve been seeing my mind evolve over time….and I like it! AKA that MATURITY AGAIN 😛 Granted in this world, we have our physical attributes and culturally people like to look young and I’m not gonna lie, I think being Asian is great for this aspect of life b/c I look at least 5 years younger than I am. (Sadly when I was 16, people thought I was 12!!! LOL and I always get ID’ed in Canada even though 19 was awhile back 😛 ) That ‘young-face thing’ is just part of being Asian. Now in contrast, for my mental age, I don’t want to seem younger than I am. I enjoy having worked for awhile and earning money and being past that student period in my life. I am somewhat knowledgeable in my field now and have a certain confidence that just didn’t exist like 6 years ago. I’m still a young professional, but one with more experience. It is GREAT!
OK so where does the HONESTY come in? (Why yes, I’m a rambler so no point is ever brief with me 😛 ) Obviously, if you like to be straight to the point, my blog probably isn’t the right one for you. The paragraph above was about growth in age and with experience. I guess, along with that, I want to say that with this maturing, I find that I can be more honest about what I think and ACCEPT it. This is what I think ‘being true to oneself’ means: just be you means accept yourself and enjoy it. Don’t try so hard to change yourself or please others. Nowadays, if I feel something, I just let it be. I don’t ask my parents if they approve. I don’t need to make sure I’m doing the same thing as my friends. ATTENTION: I think THIS IS FINALLY THE CRUX OF THE WHOLE POST!!! Wow, now I totally understand why my sister always tells me to GET TO THE POINT… but instead of doing just that to please her here, I still let myself process all these meandering thoughts on my blog, as I write. Well, because THIS.IS.MY.BLOG right? So duh, I gotta be me. (SIDE NOTE: my blog is different from a conversation obviously. If I’m talking to my sister, I do try to be brief b/c I know she does not like to meander as much as I do 😛 )
OK hmmmmmm, is there more to say? Maybe not. SHORT VERSION: as we get older, we understand ourselves better and as we do that, we trust ourselves more and then as a result, we let ourselves be and then we accept and enjoy who we are. Boom! And I guess that is the summary of my post, now over 1000 words but the summary is just a mere 2 SENTENCES LOL.
Now I really should read this over b4 posting but duuuude we know Cathy is lazy. Well I’m telling you that b/c in accepting myself, I don’t want to hide this flaw of mine. LAZY CATHY SHALL PUBLISH BLOG POST SANS A REAL READ-THROUGH. Whatever. Keeping it real!
ONE LAST SIDE NOTE: I guess another example of enjoying being ourselves for me is really relevant to this blog:
A writer’s BIG QUESTIONS: who do I write for? Who is my audience? What is the purpose of my writing?
MY ANSWER IS: #1 I write to share my thoughts and experiences with my friends and family. Since I am not always physically present, I do this to update people I know in case they wonder what I’m up to.
#2 I write for me as well. I think blogging helps me release the bubble of ideas in my brain so I am less hyper. I tend to have a lot of stuff brewing in my head and once I write stuff down, I can kinda ’empty’ that part of my brain so other ideas can enter. If I don’t write, I am just thinking and thinking and this eventually affects my sleep b/c my mind is always processing the ideas.
#3 HOWEVER, I don’t write to gain new readership. Whenever someone reads this blog, I am honoured. If I receive a comment from a stranger, it is amazing b/c I don’t know you and here you are reading my random blog entries. It is very cool and gratifying YET my focus remains on those I know. Any other readers are JUST BONUS. I don’t do this to eventually monentize anything. I don’t want ads on my blog. I just want to keep in touch with ppl and this is easier than emails. TRUTH!
OK so now I’m totally DONE. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ & mucho smoochos readers (aka ANL & my blogmaster, maybe???)