We human beings are preoccupied with inventing a self for ourselves. We keep on doing so by gathering endless opinions about ourselves from the people around us—like pixels that finally add up together to give us an image. In accepting our ‘self’ we are often accepting someone else’s definition of us. The invented self is not the true self, and it eventually wears out like delusions usually do. The more green signals we give to what others think of us, or what we wish they thought of us and the more we embody those characteristics; the less we know our true self. We lose touch with our emotional roots.

The fabrication will eventually lead to a vicious confusion from which we can never rise. One fine day, when we are old and tired, we will be hit by the realisation that we are not who we think we are. 

Upanishads, a collection of ancient  Sanskrit texts containing some of the central philosophical concepts of Hinduism, talk heavily about ‘Maya’. Maya is an illusion, it suggests that nothing is real, but a fantasy, that there’s not a thing, but thoughts—floating in the huge cosmos of existence. So all the attempts to elaborate the meaning of being oneself are always futile—empty inside out.  It can’t be described but only experienced. It is personal—closest to your inner core. Everybody has their own experience of being themselves. One cannot be the other even for a tiny bit of moment. And the sad thing is that we can’t communicate enough to convey this sacred experience.

A majority of people invent their selves corresponding to their surrounding, and a minority, like Budhha, discover himself. Most of us fall in the former category.  Thus, accepting yourself is just validating the opinions other people have about you unless you get out in the dark in a quest of discovering your true self.

Subedi is a student at the Institute Of Engineering, Pulchowk