“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story”. This is a quote from the novel The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss which came to me as I sat in my room whilst trying to stop procrastinating writing this on Sunday evening. It spurred me to question what story do I build myself out of, what story do I tell myself? After having the brief existential crisis this induced, I realised this was exploration into myself and thus I scrapped what I had written on both geographical and scientific exploration.
The way in which we perceive ourselves can be deeply challenging; we may not always understand what motivates us with clarity, but by looking inwards a glimpse is possible. Due to the difficulty of truly looking inwards, I would instead encourage you all to try to understand yourselves through your interactions with others. The way you perceive others is far easier to understand and can show you much about your own thought process.
When I was in Year 7, I spent a good amount of my Easter holidays talking to Flat Earthers. This may initially seem absurd, but it was an attempt to do just what I have described. As someone who is enthralled by science, what is a better way to look at my own views than by discussing them with those who entirely disagree with commonly agreed upon facts. Despite not agreeing with any of the arguments they put forward, due to mostly consisting of incorrect maths and pseudoscience, the experience made me realise that I had a lot of subconscious opinions about people who held these views before talking to them. They were not the crazy people they are often painted to be, many of them were normal people like you or I who happened to be deeply mistrusting of governments and large organisations or have had difficult times in their life and found some form of solace in a belief.
To challenge your own perceptions, you needn’t try something as extreme as I did. In fact, I would actively encourage you not to. However, I would implore you all, try and take a moment out of your busy day to question some of the thoughts you had that day and what motivated them. Whether you have explored something new in the more conventional sense or simply experienced a routine day. Ask yourself, what can you take away from that? What does it tell you about the story in your own head? How are you building yourself?
Alex Mann
Upper Sixth Form student