Remain Undefined How Big is Your World
i’m going to ask you all a question that
i want you to think about
so if you have a piece of paper nearby
go ahead and grab it
if not you can just participate mentally
how do you define yourself on a piece of
paper i want you to write down
who you are in five words
you can start with i am and complete the
sentence with something that defines you
we’ll give this some time so you can go
ahead and think about it
when i asked you that question how many
of you felt pressure trying to answer it
for some of you it may have come more
easily and you struggle to limit
yourself to just five
or maybe you struggle to even get to
five maybe you started out by writing
down your name
or where you were born your race or your
agenda
maybe you started out by saying your
major or your profession or your talents
or your hobbies
maybe you wrote down an adjective that
describes you or a personal value you
have
the potential for this question is
filled with endless possibilities
yet a definition requires such a narrow
platform to stand your ground on
this probably wasn’t the first time
someone asked you a question about your
identity
and it’s probably not going to be the
last but hopefully i’ll be able to give
you a new perspective about how you can
answer this question in the future
let’s first explore why people feel the
need to define themselves
we’re all familiar with the purpose of a
box boxes help us organize and transport
things from point a to point b
and as humans we too try to organize our
life the way a box
helps us organize our health and our
belongings when we feel lost
what do we do we jump in a box and we
try to give it a purpose
a position a label a definition
the problem with jumping into a box is
that they’re rigid inflexible and opaque
and there’s only so much you can put
into a box until
it’s full and you can’t put anything
else in there
it’s the same with the definition when
you try to define yourself and your
position in this world
you’re setting boundaries on your
potential and the person you can become
inhibiting you from reaching your full
potential and experiencing all that you
can offer this world
a box has a limitation a definition
has a limitation but your potential in
this world however does not
there’s a more effective way to handle
the uncertainty we inherently feel of
not belonging anywhere
but boxing ourselves up and trying to
give ourselves a definition
is not the answer and i won’t deny the
presence of a comfort zone
which is why we should all change our
perspective of them
we should consider a comfort zone a
bubble
the difference between a bubble and a
box is that a bubble is transparent
you can see inside and out of it so a
person inside a bubble is aware of the
space they are taking up
and the potential that exists around
them
but most importantly in a bubble you
have the power
inside of you to make the bubble bigger
so how big is your world when i was born
my world was very small i weighed
only 3.1 pounds and i was born five
weeks premature
but my world wasn’t only small because i
was
small my world was small because i
didn’t know how to take up space
you see not even 60 seconds of taking my
first breath of oxygen
i turned over to my side and i saw two
other girls who kind of looked like me
sitting in my bubble and this is a
picture of me and my triplet sisters
and as you can imagine growing up with
my two best friends laughing
joking playing it felt like nothing in
this world could ever bring me down
wherever i went in life i had a backup
squad and it always felt like it was us
against the world
and that was very apparent to me as an
advantage when we
immigrated from south africa to
california at the age of 12
and it felt like nothing in my world had
changed at all
but then when i began college at san
diego state university for the first
time alone
i discovered that i didn’t know who i
was apart from my sisters
i felt more whole as a fraction and
i was going to have to learn how to
start taking up more space
my journey may have started small but i
was going to build a mentality that
would push me to make my world bigger
so what did i do i started breathing
more i started living
exploring asking questions trying new
things i found my voice
and i wanted it to be heard i started
expanding my bubble
the second i let go of the definition of
being a triplet
is when i started to pave my own road
and become the woman that i am today
growing up it was difficult for me to
focus my hobbies and i always felt that
i was
just hopping onto the bandwagon of
whatever my sisters were doing
which is why the first time i picked up
a canvas i was 22 years old in my
sophomore year of college
and i discovered my artistic abilities
i had always been an artist i just
didn’t know it yet
and the more that i discovered who i was
and started expressing myself
authentically the less i was worried
about
being apart from my sisters and it made
me wonder
what else in my life is inhibiting me
from reaching my full potential
molds of a college education there can
be a lot of pressure at university to
pick a major
i started out as a journalism major
because i was told to apply to just one
and have a point of interest
yet when i got to college there were so
many things outside of my major that i
was interested in
and so i decided to pave my own way i
created my own degree which was called
an interdisciplinary studies degree in
three departments
of journalism advertising art multimedia
and film television
i was hands on with creating my degree
and it fueled my creative spirit
most universities offer this degree to
students they just don’t know about it
because they think they have to fit into
a mold picking a major
in order to be successful i was also the
first person at san diego state
university
to study abroad at a school in israel
called idc
i found out about the school and it
interested me and i worked with the
school and petitioned
in order to get that school approved i
fought for myself
i started to take up more space lastly
i’ll talk about the definition of my
physical appearance
when people meet me for the first time
their initial reaction is about
how small i am and i was expected to
reach
only 4-6 when i was tested for dwarfism
and i spent many years of my life taking
growth hormones in the hopes
of one day reaching the average height
for a female
today i’m 4 10 but people still consider
my height a disability
they think that i may be hindered in my
abilities or that i may be weak and
incapable
and i have a built-in stereotype that
defines me by my statute
but height means nothing if you aren’t
able to develop a growth mindset
after all life is about discovery and
reaching new heights in your experience
growth requires finding your limit line
and crossing it in order to make your
world
bigger it’s about self-awareness and
potential
understanding your current position but
also knowing that there is so much more
that you’re capable of achieving
and experiencing i’ve actively been
working on expanding my bubble to give
it more meaning
i began teaching gymnastics a year ago
and i now practice plyometrics
calisthenics training
i can do 20 pull-ups i can do 5
muscle-ups pistol squats one arm
push-ups you name it
with a growth mindset i believe that my
skills and abilities can be developed
through hard work and dedication
actions can change an outcome and there
is a connection between hard work and
improvement
to develop a growth mindset you have to
be willing to accept
all that you don’t know and start
embracing the experience of being a
student again
when you realize all the things that you
fall short from in your life
can be improved on by learning you begin
to gain confidence in yourself
a passion or desire is just a starting
point but if you want to be great and
discover your full potential you gotta
be prepared to work
hard you gotta find your boundaries and
actively work on expanding them to give
your life more meaning
for the past two years i’ve actively
been running towards fear
i’ve been chasing the things that i
don’t know and searching for the lines
of my limitation
which is exactly how i found myself in
richmond virginia a city that i’d never
been to before
never visited never knew a single person
in the middle of a pandemic and amid
socioeconomic unrest and i had to uproot
myself alone
but it was all to chase my passion and
the relentless pursuit
of reaching my full potential which
right now
happens to be a vcu brand center so i’ll
go back to my question
how do you define yourself
there’s a famous quote by benjamin
franklin and he said
most people die at age 25 and aren’t
buried until they’re 75
and it doesn’t refer to the actual
physical death but rather the death of
one’s hopes
aspirations and dreams and i can’t help
but wonder whether or not the reason we
stop exploring new things in our life is
because
of these molds and definitions we try to
fit into growing up
the age of exploration stops the second
we start trying to define ourselves
life is about discovery and definitions
limit our growth potential and
exploration
they inhibit you from experiencing your
authentic self which naturally is a
curious person
which is why we should all strive to
remain undefined
go against the grain chase the unknown
and never stop
exploring your potential your comfort
zone should not be a box
you should think of it as a bubble that
expands when you
realize that you have the power inside
of you to make it bigger
we all should take a hard look at
ourselves every once in a while to
re-examine our position
and start to inflate our bubble with
more air
don’t be afraid to take up space remain
undefined
because your world could be so much
bigger
and you may never know