True Happiness? Be Yourself!

Spent the past few hours seeing some old episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That show just never seems to get old now does it? Guess what? Ever since I started blogging (not like it's been that long anyway), I've received some rather surprising comments and feedback that just made me smile. Something really interesting that kept coming up was that I write like an Arts student. Some people even went as far as asking if I was studying Law, Philosophy, Psychology... Hehe, e jo oh! Whoever said Engineering students couldn't be brilliant writers? The feedback has been beyond inspiring to say the least anyway. Gracias!

So concerning today's post...being yourself...what does that really mean to you?

You see, most times we tend to strive to live up to the standards of perfection of the people around us, especially those we hold in high esteem, just to get their approval. We go out of our ways to be who we aren't so much that we stretch ourselves beyond our elastic limits (now I'm sure every science student, at least, knows what happens when elastic limits are exceeded) and end up utterly unhappy, bitter and sad. So I ask again, what does being yourself really mean to you, dear friend?

You could be haemophobic, never been able to score above an E in any science quiz and still argue you were destined to be the new-generation Ben Carson. You could die in your mind a dozen times and pee your pants when asked to read a comprehension passage in class and claim you were born to be a world-renowned orator. There are thousands of "successful" career people today who take home paychecks fatter than Pauline Potter and still have regrets about their career choices. You see young couples beaming with smiles on their wedding days like it was going out of fashion. Fast-forward 3 years and see them complaining to anyone who cares to listen about how getting married so young was the wrongest decision of their entire lives.

Happiness, paramount as it is, means an array of different things to different people. It could mean money to the hardworking trader, Mr. Okeke in Onitsha, fame to the A-list celebrity, Oluwaseyi, in Lagos, religion to the muslim cleric, Alhaji Danladi, in Kano or family to little old me. What is happiness to you? What are your own values and priorities? What sort of future filled with smiles do you imagine for yourself? What is your definition of success? Pursue whatever dreams you want to pursue, even if they end up not coming true. After all they're called dreams for a reason. Just be certain that whatever you do, you do not just because someone else thinks you should, or because you believe it's expected of you, but because you know it will bring you happiness.