Regret

You should’ve tried out for the musical, or perhaps even show choir. That’s something you can never go back on. Singing has always been one of your favorite things to do. You should’ve taken more art classes when they were free of charge in high school to find other ways to express yourself. You’ve always wanted to get better at drawing, you know. You should’ve re-joined AYSO, or some other soccer group. You know that soccer was your passion; while club soccer got to be too much and wasn’t your cup of tea, you know AYSO was where you belonged. You should’ve worked harder your junior year. Last year really tanked your GPA and you might not get the salutatorian spot that you’re so close to. You should’ve joined The Plain Brown Wrapper your freshman year and you would’ve had five years of language arts. Even though people tell you those things don’t matter, you

know its a failure on your part to fall short on something you very easily could’ve achieved.

You knew that these things were slipping through your fingers as they were happening, yet you sat there and did nothing. Why can’t you see that an opportunity that you let the timer run up on is a missed opportunity that will never come your way again?

The drawn piece is a literal self portrait. I usually don’t draw due to the fact that I always get too upset with the way it turns out to finish it, but I decided to branch out and do something different to what I normally do. The downside is that this drawing is riddled with imperfections. But, maybe this could be in reference to how I’m an imperfect person, along with everyone else. On first glance, this may appear to be a poor rendition of a Bitmoji from Snapchat due to the interesting proportions. But, the head of my portrait was drawn very largely on purpose: my worst enemy is my mind. I’m constantly overthinking, jumping to false conclusions, and assuming everyone hates me. Every word that someone says goes through a processor and is overanalyzed. For example, if your vocabulary suddenly changes even slightly, red flags pop up in my head, even if I’m not completely sure what they mean. But overthinking also applies to the things that I have done; perhaps even things I haven’t.

My flash fiction piece ties into this. In this piece, I detail all of the regrets that I think about on a day-to-day basis. It’s almost like a conversation I have inside my brain. I constantly remind myself of all of my mistakes and how others view me because of that. Along with that, my drawing has a wide grin. My exterior is very giggly and bubbly most times; I’m often laughing at the most random things. But it often times a facade that I put on for people that I talk to every day. Hiding behind this mask is a brain that is running at a billion thoughts a second. This also ties in with the color choice of the shirt. At first glance, the shirt is green which represents my envy for those who can simply live their lives without second guessing every move and word. Upon looking deeper, there lies blue undertones, which represent a hidden sadness. This choice lies hand-in-hand with the facade; the blue is hiding deep inside, heavily protected from most people in my life. Sad emotions and feelings like this are hard for me to share and often are pushed below my other emotions. Additionally, this piece is very simplistic and may not seem to hold very much meaning, but very specific choices were put into every feature of the drawing; I think that really attributes to the meaning that it holds with me.

I think so far this year, my work detailing personality and bias have been very interesting and enlightening. I never knew that personality was a relatively fixed thing. While the details can be changed, you at your core never change. I always thought that if you go through certain life-changing experiences, you could be a very changed person.

The Fluidity of Personality

Personality is a very complex and difficult to define concept due to the fact that every single person’s personality varies from the next. The general consensus on personality is that it is formed when you’re young and that it stays static and unchanging for your whole life. However, that is only half true.
The Invisibilia Podcast, hosted by Alix Spiegel and and Lulu Miller, held a podcast by the name of "The Personality Myth" about the idea of personality changing. An example that they chose was a man named Dan, a convicted rapist. He had always been a violent person and thought it was the only way to communicate. At some moment in prison, he realized violence was never the answer, especially when it came to someone he said he loved. From that day forward, he distanced himself from the violence that he had surrounded himself with previously and eventually was a changed man. In his change in situation, he actually was able to change how he acted. A question may be asked, though: why do some people’s personalities seem to remain the same? Or, “Why does my mom always seem to act exactly like my mom?” as Spiegel asks (Personality). The answer would remain the same in that your personality depends on your situation. Your mom might not have a very big change in situation anymore that she gets older as she has settled into her life. Therefore, her personality would not have much room to change.

The idea that personality can be fluid in a way is also backed up in two other sources. One source from the website of 16 personalities, titled “Is it Possible to Change Your Personality Type?”, states that your core personality cannot change. But, it says that aspects of your personality can be fluid. An example provided is that you might be a very casual and spontaneous person most of the time. But, your work has a very strict schedule that your boss is very obsessive about. So, your lifestyle would change because of it. Once you leave that job, you’ll return to normal. A psychology blog is the source of the text “Can You Change Your Personality?” which just further solidifies this argument. It states that while the personality we have as adults tend to come from the way we acted as infants or toddlers, our personality can change with the situation. “As our lives change, so do our personalities.” (Can).

I strongly agree with this argument. People at their core don’t really change, but your situation can strongly affect some of your personality traits. While I don’t believe you can change your entire personality as a whole like The Invisibilia Podcast might imply, you can heavily influence it. Don’t get me wrong; I believe Dan is a changed man. I simply think that he simply changed certain traits he had to make himself the person he wanted to be. Maybe this could help me with my problems with overthinking. Maybe it’s just a personality trait that I can eventually form into something more desirable. Even if that’s not how it works, it could still help to trick my brain into thinking more rationally and taking more stress off of my back. I’m nowhere close to that now, but life is a work in progress.