to thine ownself be true

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, crotchety old Polonius tells his son, Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true”—and then, blah blah, something far less quotable. Since then, this advice has been dispensed approximately 5,684,765,876 times. You, as a young person, have probably heard it a lot, for you are young and growing. And it sounds good, suggesting, as it does, purity, righteousness, and a consistent personality.

But there’s one thing that kind of bugs me about this popular wisdom: I don’t get it. Or, to quote the contemplative Angela Chase, “People always say how you should be yourself, like your ‘self’ is this definite thing, like a toaster or something...Like you can know what it is, even.” Being yourself seems so simple and obvious, but, not to get all liberal-arts-college-student-who’s-just-discovered-philosophy, can you really know who that is?

Sure, you can know things about yourself. You know your beliefs and can predict most of your actions. Your thoughts and feelings are, to a great extent, your own. But your personality has not been completely the same since birth, and if you say otherwise, you’re lying. People change. It’s a time of SELF-DISCOVERY. Freshman friends can be enemies by senior year. Someone who once spent all of her weekends at home now parties those same nights. And people get weird about it. Somehow, changing at all can be interpreted as not being true to yourself.

When I started high school, I was very concerned with getting really good grades. But I took hard classes my freshman year, and my A+ streak didn’t last long. I flipped a shit when I got a C+ in Biology. Being a good student was so important to me, because I didn’t do much outside of school. Then I started writing, blogging, and taking art classes at nearby colleges. I thought these things were way more fun than killing myself studying. It wasn’t that I didn’t work hard, it’s just that I realized there was more to life than getting good grades. To my studious