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Cristina Crescenzo (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

I believe that if there was an intro to self-confidence class offered to me at school, I would be the first one to sign up because I, like many other individuals, can be self-deprecating to a fault. It has gotten so bad that I use putting myself down as a form of humor to get others to like me. Thus, I understand that learning to be confident in who you are is something that can take your whole life. That is what is so great about childhood, because those were the days you could get up in front of strangers and belt out a tune at the top of your lungs! I think sometimes we forget about the fearless child within our hearts as we age and start to criticize everything and anyone.

Therefore, in my personal opinion, the concepts of perfection and normality should be thrown out the window, because society has made the line between the two so thin that you could easily fall off trying to get across to the other side. Take self-confidence for instance, people will say if you are overconfident you are a snob, and if you put yourself down you are weak, so in society’s eyes there is no right answer to a question it created. There are always going to be opposites within the human experience, and yet we contradict ourselves by calling each side of the spectrum a flaw, so it is okay to be frustrated by these invisible guidelines. 

I have always wondered why we can’t keep our childhood mindset that tells us we can be anything we want. Once some people lose that blissful ignorance, they start to become uncomfortable in their skin. I want us to be able to sew our hearts on our sleeves and talk more often about a topic that affects many lives. I cannot help but think that, through time, we have gotten further away from what being a human actually means. We are meant to be one hundred percent authentic from the day we burst forth into this world, but we then spend so much time covering the human traits that make us special. Consequently, anyone who strays or questions this way of life is a liability, so we have been taught to belittle ourselves down to the smallest detail. 

Furthermore, we want to pretend that we aren’t restricting individuality when the most important facets of becoming who you are have little rules written on them, and we continue to put a veil over this reality. In conclusion, in a world where we are supposed to have freedom, I can’t help but feel that there is another hand guiding me toward its own best interests. My advice to help push against that hand is to take the time to remember who you were and what you believed in as a kid, because our lifetime supply of self-confidence is buried deep inside us. All we have to do is dig it out.

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Cristina Crescenzo is a 21-year-old aspiring writer who really loves contributing to the Low Entropy blog and its many thought-provoking topics in the hopes of one day writing novels to spread disability and mental health awareness.