I’ve always felt the need to prove something. To who, I’m not sure. But I’ve realized that a lot of the decisions I make are not out of my own interest but out of the intent to prove — to prove that I can succeed. And a lot of people use the cliche to follow your own path or to not focus on validation from others, but I realized that it’s hard because there’s a lot of nuance involved.
People always say to pursue different opportunities, to expand your horizons, to challenge yourself in order to grow and learn and realize all the potential we have as individuals. And I think in the past, this has been my pseudo-reasoning, my pretense for the choices I make: I take this hard class that I really don’t care about and I work really hard so I can get a good grade because I want to care & challenge myself & blah blah. but no. But once I stop gaslighting myself, it’s really: I take this hard class that I really don’t care about and I work really hard so I can get a good grade because I want to prove that I can get a good grade in this really hard class — that I am capable of succeeding. But I’ve realized, why does it matter if I succeed if I don’t care? Someone else taking the same class and putting in the same effort as me is doing it because they love the material and they want to leverage it for their future — and for some reason, my path has collapsed onto theirs, but I am the lost one and they are the ones truly gaining despite similar efforts, similar grades, similar everything that you can fold & stare at on a paper.
And it’s easy to say STOP ✋ trying to prove yourself and START doing what you’re truly passionate about instead of what others are, but it’s hard to look at someone else’s path and not want to follow it, hoping that you will bear the same fruit as them. I think the cliche of following your own path is just not enough because what is my path? My path is derived from other people’s and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We gain interest by observing others — my passion for writing came from my best friend, my niche in geography came from my table group in math, and my interest in CS came from like everyone at Berkeley. And I believe that we pursue things because we do want to prove that we are capable of doing well. Why else would we do it in the first place if we knew that we wouldn’t be able to succeed?
It’s complicated. I don’t really get it. But I think what I’ve realized is that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to prove yourself — you just have to in the right things and to the right people. And what are those right things? Things you feel energized learning, things you feel you will leverage in the future, things that drive & motivate you. For me, that’s NOT number theory and information theory and probabilistic models, unfortunately, despite how often I try to persuade myself into thinking that maybe it is. It’s actually writing and creating and building things. There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other people’s paths, but once in a while we owe it to ourselves to ask if we are really enjoying what we are doing. Who are the right people? Yourself.
The only person you have to prove yourself to is yourself — because you are the one who is living the life your actions derived. You can prove to everyone in the world that you are successful but why does that matter if it isn’t the success you care about.
i know this was a lot but thank you for reading as always 🥺
goated
this changed my life