I love great teachers. I believe nobody would be anybody without great teachers. It’s not only the impression they leave on minds both young and old that matters. The manner in which you find a great teacher is equally important aspect as well. Sometimes being without a mentor will feel like freedom and absolute control- though this freedom quickly gets replaced by fear and confusion. As teenagers- rather as living beings- we can never truly find ourselves that easily can we?

Think about it, if you are looking for your self, won’t you always keep looking because we keep changing all the time. New experiences mould us, they create what we are. In a surge of hormones and change, not to mention peer pressure and a new kind of social life, I find myself lost. At some point I thought I knew who I was but in fact I only knew that version of myself. Now the game has changed and I find it hard to let go of every new identity I pick up. Through the various schools I have been in, the countries I have traveled and people I have met, I have had to discover, lose and discover myself many a times. It feels like a never ending cycle- but I think I have got a clue to it:

You just need to learn your “core values”, the ones that have stayed the same throughout. Granted there may be no such thing but it’s equally possible that there is, I just haven’t looked hard enough.

That doesn’t make the transition any less terrifying. You’ve been through it.

You get all of your friends together, work is going great and your favorite Ice Hockey team is winning. The next day it’s all gone. Your friends found new friends the moment you turned your back, there was some misunderstanding. You lose all the motivation behind work, feels like being a failure. To top that off, the Ice Hockey team just disbanded. All gone, and you must start from scratch. New friends, better workplace and a more stable team. Though in face of old things, all new things look better until the charm wears off. They still breakdown at the same rate.

That’s why I wish everyone finds a mentor in life. They guide you or they may just leave you in the open to fight it off.- and it will work because they connect with you and know what works best for you. They get that one size does not fit all, so they work toward tailoring things. You may know it or not, you may feel like they care or they may not. You may feel super comfortable in their presence or you may wish to run away. That’s fine, as long as you know something that you want to do when you interact.

It may be one’s own self, a parent or a janitor. It doesn’t have to be a traditional professor. You can’t force someone to be a mentor. That’s the cool thing- they mentor you because they want to. Otherwise it’s like choosing a wand that did not choose you at Ollivanders in the sense that nobody benefits from it and it leaves behind a trail of disappointing destruction. A mentor is someone you find unknowingly. This does not mean you sit home and wait. It means that you stay open to the idea that even your old high school bully may end up being your best mentor. As it goes with clothes, you need to go out and try on a few sized. It can be an incredibly frustrating process with bouts of being lost, no sense of purpose and loneliness. But I hope you have friends for that. Actually, I hope more that you are surrounded by strangers that can become friends.

You’re a nice person.

You may call my praise to be baseless but it is not praise. It’s a reminder to reflect. To see what your mind says when it reads those words. Nice to yourself or to others? Do you agree with it or do you not? Haha you don’t have to be modest in your head right? So if you agree with it, wholeheartedly, that’s great!

If you don’t then here’s another one:

You have the capacity to be nice.