How to Achieve True Happiness
同志社国際高等学校

１年

梶崎

妃那

Right now, you are looking at a person who constantly lied and faked
who I really was for the whole 7 years of elementary school. As a little girl, I
had fears just like anybody else. But they weren’t common little girl’s fears
like spiders, or ghosts, or monsters under beds. I feared isolation. I feared
even thinking about losing my friends, and my status of belonging in a group.
All I wanted at that time was to live a typical life with regular sleepovers andgirl talks with best friends. It seemed like the scariest thing in the world forthat to slip right out of my hands. So, to avoid this fear I had, I was willingto do anything. And so I did for my whole elementary years, and it made me
realize something. It made me realize that self-expressions change anddetermine the shape and form of our lives. From the way we dress, from theway we interact with others, and even from the smallest decisions we makelike choosing red over pink, there are endless ways to show who we are. They

Self-expression is a powerful thing. Depending on how you show it to others,
the people, relationships, opportunities, and moments in our lives can differ.

My 7 years in elementary school were a series of false statements andactions about who I was. I had an ideal at that time to always have a groupof friends alongside me, and to avoid my fear of being alone. I still remember
begging my mother for a Barbie doll I didn’t even want. I would desperately
cry and beg for it, but not because I wanted the Barbie badly, but because I
was afraid that if I didn’t have a Barbie doll, all my friends would disappear
and only isolation would be left to greet me. I’m sure everyone can relate
going through something like this, and has either lied or changed yourselves
just to fit in and feel more strong and perfect. Even I still sometimes fakemyself to avoid judgements, and to feel like I belong somewhere. This issomething we all do. How many times are we told “Be yourself”? But that’s

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define the small parts of ourselves that add up, and make us who we are.

an impossible goal. We all know that being able to show your true self ismuch harder than it sounds. It’s shocking how we can easily force ourselvesto change our characteristics just to live as a perfect person in an ideal world
we imagine. An ideal world coming to reality sounds great right? Who could
say no to this? But from my experience of trying to obtain this “ideal world”,
I know that it only brings a small moment of satisfaction, and only ends in
unhappiness. Living in the ideal world comes with a price. You’ll have tosacrifice your true colours and live in it as a person that’s not you. When you
do that, you’ll never find true happiness.

Please take a moment and imagine a family member or a friend who you
feel you connect to without having to hide your true self. We live in a diverse
society, filled with millions of people from an endless variety of ideas andviewpoints. So there are people we can connect, and accept us as we are, aslong as we can make the same commitment. I want to tell the little girl I wasin the past, who was living off of fake happiness that there’s no need toshape out a certain form of our lives based on ideals and perfection. Forget
about ideals, forget about perfection, and just think about the true you. Your
高校生―Ｉ部門

life is not someone else’s nor your ideal self. It’s only yours and will always
be yours, so why not express yourself the way you are, and live in themoments, in a place where you really belong to. That’s how I believe we canfind true happiness.

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