Discovering your new adult personality. Essay

Being a teenager is the surest study in contradictions, a constant dance between bravado and doubt, fear and exhilaration. And as we plow into Week 25, try to keep yourself open to all of it-throw your arms over your head as you ride the loop de loops of emotion, keep your brain flexible for all the necessary mental acrobatics-but see if you can find that still, small voice inside of yourself that will keep you grounded through the adventure, the one that keeps you moving forward.
Leave it to transcendentalist poet Walt Whitman to pretty much sum up life in three lines
Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself.
(I am large. I contain multitudes.)
From his American Epic, "Song of Myself," Whitman gives the world the most eloquent #sorrynotsorry as he waltzes down the path of self discovery. Most of you are here, or about to be here, too. You are starting to see yourselves as young adults, and in this, you are discovering your new adult personality. But change is hard. One day you've totally got it and then the next, you cry like the child you used to be. It's okay, you contain multitudes. And discovering them is all about embracing contradictions.
You need to be both brave and vulnerable-which, it turns out, are not such contradictory traits after all. You need courage to go to the tender places inside yourself. It's all about honesty, really. If you want to be honest, and to have others be honest with you, you need to have the guts to put your own heart out there.
You need to understand that your parents and teachers will be both loving and brutal. As you grow into a three-dimensional being, they will imbue you with compassion, but they cannot not protect you -you'll need to squirm, ache, and find yourself in positions you can barely endure. These dark corners are where you find the courage and strength you will need as an adult.
You need to develop a thin skin but keep an open heart. Life may bring you resistance or even downright rejection, but you can't let that seep into your innermost heart. Only you know your deepest dreams and desires-don't let the naysayers touch those. If you let yourself get jaded and cynical, you won't be able to access the brave, vulnerable place that the best self springs from.
Most importantly, you need to give yourself permission to both flail and soar. Don't judge yourself. Just keep moving forward, one step after another, into the great unknown of the great unknown of yourself.
The poet Rumi said, "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
That field is the place where your adult self is born. Run around it with abandon. You are large inside. You contain multitudes. Let every ounce of your expansive, complicated self pour out, and one day, you will wake up knowing exactly who you are.