Letting Your True Self Shine

All our problems begin when we are not true to ourselves. For various reasons, we believe that expressing our thoughts or opinions freely might inconvenience someone, so we suppress ourselves and confine ourselves in a small box, adjusting our behavior to match the person we're interacting with. We assume that by saying what others want to hear, we'll make them happy, but we fail to realize that in doing so, we gradually lose parts of ourselves. 

Eventually, we become unrecognizable even to ourselves, instead of to those around us, because those who truly love us embrace all the unique aspects that make us who we are—the things we may perceive as irritating, clumsy, or awkward. "You've changed," they say, and indeed, we have changed within this relentless cycle, gazing at a stranger in the mirror, unsure of who we were and who we've become.

Everything in nature is inherently unique. A tree never questions why it's a tree and not something else, or what it should do to appeal to those who observe it. It simply exists as a tree—that's its purpose—and we admire it for precisely that reason. Nature understands that everything possesses its own uniqueness, and its sole task is to flourish with all its distinctive elements, because only then will its true essence be revealed.