Bullying, gossiping, judging. Those are the three main actions people love to do. It’s never surprising when you catch yourself comparing, or being insecure about something that someone triggered in yourself. Jealousy runs through the human’s veins as such a strong-bold feeling that no one likes to feel. So as you're in school grounds, in a vulnerable state, can you really be yourself?
Poor or rich, happy or not, everyone is different in their own way. At school it might be: intelligence, academic-intellectual, social peers. Maybe it’s something physical like, what you wear, what your hair looks like, what you generally look like as a human. Anything. Everything. Everywhere. People are judged and people are judging.
The term “be yourself” is preached in every school ever since elementary, but can you really? Some are people pleasers, others might be trying to stand out among the rest of their peers. Either way, both are striving to be what society tells them to be.
The comparison game is not a choice, it's more a survival mechanism refined by social media and constant digital competition. We are given thousands of social points daily—perfectly filtered images, achievements, highlight reels of social lives—and our brains process them instantly: Am I enough? The feeling of jealousy, that "strong-bold feeling," is often just the bitter consequence of this social audit. It's the painful realization that our authentic self, in this moment, does not measure up to the idealized, normalized standard of society.
The conflict between that public persona and the quiet, authentic self underneath. The longer a student maintains this fake act, the deeper the pain becomes. The effort of keeping up the act is exhausting, leading to anxiety, stress, and the very insecurity the initial insecurity triggered. If you are constantly performing, who are you when the audience leaves?
Is being a people-pleaser truly a pursuit of happiness, or is it a desperate strategy to control the environment by ensuring everyone likes you? Is trying to stand out truly an act of individuality, or is it merely striving to be the most approved version of a non-conformist, another socially acceptable? In both cases, the action is driven not by the pure desire of the self, but by the gravitational pull of society’s expectations.
To be truly "yourself" in school requires a radical form of courage—the willingness to risk exclusion and the fortitude to face the inevitable judgments and gossip. Perhaps the true lesson isn't to simply "be yourself," but to learn how to protect that self, to understand that the judgments of others are often projections of their own insecurities, and to slowly, bravely, build a community that values you for the messy, imperfect, and wonderful human you genuinely are. It is a slow revolution fought one honest action at a time.
Written by: Abigail Piconada