Fly to the beat of your own tweet

Though Valentine’s Day is often regarded as a day dedicated to our loved ones, we forget to remember the most important relationship of our lives: the one with ourselves. It is a relationship we spend a lifetime cultivating, one that establishes a baseline for our moral integrity and beliefs. When we are young, our only sense of self stems from the influence of our families, our first major relationships, thus making the process of staying true to oneself much simpler. As we mature, however, external pressures blur the initial clarity we once had as children of who we were and who we want to become.

School provides many opportunities for one to express his or her individuality in the forms of club participation and extracurricular activities. These varied activities, done seemingly for so many other reasons, help us discover our interests. However, with new opportunities come new pressures. Pressures to be “perfect,” to be “normal” and to be “successful” often cloud our judgment, causing us to stray from who we are.
Recent events compel us to search within ourselves and to be confident in our ideals. Prime examples of such pressures include the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest of Redondo Union’s LGBT club, which incited a community to remonstrate a group that unjustly subjugated another; the annual Red Ribbon week, which discourages students from abusing substances, causes us to reevaluate our stances on drugs and alcohol; and finally, Black History Month, which prompts us to recall times where individuals refused to conform to the majority and fought through adversity for equal human rights. The game of life constantly challenges us to shift our morals and to reestablish our perspectives.

If every individual has the confidence to stand firm in his or her own beliefs and to accept progressive, new ones, then our society will inch closer to a true unity against discrimination and malice. It is in these moments when it is easy to conform to mass opinion that we assert these values.
There is no relationship that is as lasting as the one that you have with yourself. The way to best strengthen this internal bond is to know who you are and what you stand for.