Year 7/8 runner-up: Natasha Langdon, Hurlstone Agricultural High School

Natasha Langdon 

Truth to Myself

You wear the latest trend to impress your friends, so you’re an ‘attention seeker’. Because of that, you wear what you want, so your clothes are ‘daggy’. You listen to only the most popular songs to avoid getting shunned, so you music is ‘so mainstream’. Because of that, you listen to music you actually like, so your taste is ‘horrible’. You watch what everyone else is watching in fear of rejection, so you’re a ‘try hard’. Because of that, you watch your favourite show that no-one else really likes, so you’re ‘weird’. Popular society will never let you win. No matter what you do, someone somewhere will put it under the magnifying glass, chipping away at it with horrible remarks, and at the same time chipping away at your self-esteem. What matters to me is the courage to turn a blind eye to the perfectionist nature of society, and instead do what you want to do, without the weight of your reputation dragging you down.

For some people, the courage to break away from conformity simply isn’t there. They have believed all their life that they wouldn’t be able to fit in without becoming what popular society demands. But the courage that it takes to disregard the jeers and mocking calls of society is what matters to me. For me, I don’t believe how people can go to so much effort to impress other people, and sometimes completely forget who they really are. Last year, I realised that I had spent so much time getting other people to think I was better that I was, that I had almost completely lost my identity to the stereotype of girls my age. Then and there, I decided to push my thoughts of other people’s opinion into a dark corner of my mind, and stopped pretending to be something I wasn’t. Now, I watch people around me struggle to keep up with the Joneses, while I sit and observe trends come in and go out in a never-ceasing cycle. What matters to me is the strength and courage to block out what happens, and do things the way that you want, without anyone else’s opinion becoming an obstacle.

Immersed in popular society, it becomes difficult to see where you want to go. Most of the time you become afraid of wanting to be something that truly matters to you, because you think everyone else will see you differently because of it. Your whole life becomes governed by other people’s opinions, in such a way that your own opinion, the one that should be the most important, gets drowned out and forgotten. If you break free of the grip of everyone else’s expectations and instead listen to your own, everything becomes clear and uncomplicated. What matters to me is following your dreams, without worrying about everyone else’s dreams for you.

So what matters to me? To stay true to who you are, to ignore the views of society and to never be afraid to do what you want. What matters to me is what’s inside you, not what everyone else wants to see. What matters to me is to not let the most important voice, your own, be drowned out by everyone else’s. What matters to me is not seeking approval. All of this means one thing: what matters to me is truth to myself. I would rather know who I am, than have everyone else know how well I can pretend.

“To thine own self be true” from Hamlet by William Shakespeare.