One of the easiest daily assumptions we each carry is that we know ourselves and how we live. We know our own clothing preferences, what foods we don’t like, what we think is funny and all of those beautiful facets of personality that crystallize into who we are. This is the reason I love asking people about their favorites: they’re our simplest distinctions. We know what they are and feel security because of it. We take for granted that we will act according to our identities, because if that were up in the air, every day would be a self-reflexive philosophical crisis. (Ohmygosh that sounds horrible.) So it’s all good! We can bullet-point our correct character adjectives and speed through personality quizzes. It’d be weird if we couldn’t, after living with ourselves for the past 20-ish years. That’s a mighty long time to get to know someone, if you ask me.

…Then again, maybe not. Because I’m heading toward 21 years and this girl in the mirror is getting unexpectedly good at throwing me curve balls. Isn’t that just the absurdist thing? That we can surprise ourselves? That the phrases “Before I knew it, I was…” or “Suddenly, I found myself…” exist at all is mind-boggling. I mean, we are ourselves.

But it’s Life As Unusual, Cont’d as I find myself speedily undermining certain “facts” I “knew” about how I act. Recently, I’ve been letting something highly unfamiliar develop, sans my go-to over-analysis and deconstruction… and I’m really, completely not used to that. (I know this sounds super-vague, but the specifics aren’t the point.) Right now, I’m entertaining an idea that could potentially cause me future anxiety, and readers? That’s so not me. In many ways, my style is clear-cut, no ambiguity, thank-you-very-much, good bye. I thought that was pretty solid. But I realized that for so long prior to these new little episodes, much of that didn’t have experiential precedence…or maybe it did, once or twice. Mostly, they were decisions I had made about myself that existed to prescribe my future, too. This time I’m taking a—what do they call it? Oh, yeah. A chance. I find myself stepping into a particular opportunity, against my former self-medicated judgment.

We make so many kinds of assumptions about who we are and will always be. Do any of the following sound familiar to you? I’ve only been good at math, so there’s no way I’m good at creative writing. I work best under pressure, which is why I won’t ever get enough sleep. I can’t connect with people in class because I’m shy, and they think I’m boring. I need to be in a relationship because being alone means being lonely. Or, I’m too independent, and no relationship will be meaningful enough to be worth the effort.

To be sure, we each have our Bad Past Memories that by default become our present/future To Not Do lists. We learn from our misadventures and count on the lessons learned to be static. It’s necessary, of course, because otherwise we’d have to re-experience pain and discomfort all the time. Blech. That’d be like having to re-learn everyday not to touch the hot stove or something.

Really, though, when it comes to our own person and ideas of our future, who are we to set things in stone? I feel quite strongly that there are only a few things in life of which we can all be truly assured, and our preferences and “types” and ideals of today somehow don’t seem to fit the bill. We change, we grow, we learn, and it’s cliché because it’s undeniably true. Things we “know” about ourselves can become dictators of future decisions, and the longer we reinforce them, the more we close doors—without realizing it. Is that not scary? We’re Stanford students who question everything. It should be okay to question ourselves sometimes, too.

So surprise, surprise! Turns out I don’t know everything after all. Turns out I can’t plan everything on my own. Ultimately, though, it turns out that there are way bigger things at work in my life than any of my greatest intellectual, rational or deductive epiphanies will ever be able to catch up to. On one level, it’s terrifying to leave the crutch that I’ve got the final word on everything that affects me. But beyond that pointless endeavor to command my entire reality is a beautiful freedom. It comes with recognizing that despite my strongest man-made intentions, something might just sweep me off my feet in a way I surely could not have foreseen.

Questioning yourself? Let Nina in at [email protected]