change
the first part of changing yourself for the better is finding out the parts of yourself that you wish to improve on, and accepting them (and yourself) as they are. you can never be perfect, and that's okay. i've heard these sentences hundreds of times from different self-help sources, but you only realise that it's true when you actually feel it. you cannot hate yourself into being a better person. this ties into the conversations i've had about diets, and my personal belief that if you simply launch yourself into a hard diet (no scope for error, guilt when you can't adhere to the rules), a rebound is inevitable. love yourself, and change to a you that you wish to be (without hating the now). there's no better way. there's none healthier.
i've changed enormously over the past three years, and i don't believe i would recognise me of before too strongly, and i couldn't have done it alone. as i thanked kriti for the part she's played in this, she just told me: “it's just friendship”, and i'm always reminded of the massive debt we would owe our friends if they weren't all strictly non-transactional. i wouldn't have changed this much without my friends, and i would definitely not be the me i am. i hate all my friends that will call me out in an instant if i say something wrong, and yet i would be nowhere about them. there's no space for my ego there.
i can tally up my progress over the past three years, and almost none of it is academic. true, i did learn one very big thing: how to love what i learn, but the seeds for that already lived in me, germinating whenever i had the fortune of a good subject or a good teacher. i have learned much, much more about everything outside the classroom, challenging my understandings and beliefs. at the end of the day, a holistic me is who will be there to deal with the world. i hope i've done well with him. i hope he never stops learning how to live.