I once wrote about how I could never come up with my own ideas, that my cre­ativ­ity was non-existent. After all, I look to this and that for inspi­ra­tion and ideas on nice, sim­ple web­page design. It seems to be true for almost every­thing I do though. My style of dress. My expres­sions. My elocution.

When I first wrote about this, it felt like I had no cre­ativ­ity what­so­ever, that noth­ing I cre­ated was orig­i­nal. I con­stantly felt like all that I could do was imitate.

The real­iza­tion dawned on me today, that I always look up to cer­tain aspects of so many peo­ple, and that I’m always try­ing to cap­ture that aspect for myself, such as Steve’s style, Aaron’s char­ac­ter, Rob’s seren­ity, John’s/Alvin’s intel­li­gence, Nadine’s charisma, or Dave’s strength. It feels like I’m just a mot­ley menagerie of other peo­ples’ per­son­al­i­ties, never really being “myself”. I end up being some­one who can only imi­tate parts of other people.

I sup­pose that I’m fine with this, although it’s taken me a while to under­stand this fact. After all, it’s only been within the last year or so that I’ve come to accept myself, and who I’ve come to be. I feel like I’ve become a bet­ter per­son in my pur­suit of self-improvement, but only by fol­low­ing what I like in others.

For only in oth­ers can I see beauty.