e.e. cummings once wrote, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
When you're a child we're molded and disciplined by our parents and other authority. We're inspired to be like our big brothers and sisters. We try to be just like our favorite movie star or super hero.
When you're a teenager it's not only your parents you rebel against, but we fall into peer pressure. We try to be just like our friends or do things to be noticed/liked by others. To add on to that we try to copy what the media shows us as being ideal.
Then when you reach adulthood, you would think you wouldn't be so easily influenced by the media and peer pressure, but we are. Even as we age we're then influenced by our children, spouses, doctors, and caretakers.
So I agree with cummings. It's hard to define who the self actually is when we are influenced by so many outside sources. Yes, these things mold us into who we are but it's from my experience that figuring out who we are is a never ending journey.
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