Being Myself

    A few summers ago, I traveled to Washington, D.C. for a leadership conference. I find that at all of these conferences I attend, people are so unique. There are those who like to brag about all they have accomplished and those who one wonders how exactly they ended up at a leadership conference. Then, there are the people I find who are a lot like myself - people who have been very fortunate for everything they are blessed with, but don't like to tell others about those things.

    I feel I have this innate sense. It is a sense that when meeting someone I can tell who I will be friends with. Maybe this is just the over confidence effect, but I truly think I can just tell. When traveling to this specific conference, I had one goal in mind, to meet as many people as I could and be extremely outgoing. While waiting for others in the airport I talked to the students around me. There was one girl who I knew I was going to be friends with. She was extremely talkative, but also very friendly. This girl (B we will call her for the purposes of my blog) exposed herself to the world and didn't have a care what other people believed. She was the type of person I've always wanted to be.

    B was from a wealthy family in New Orleans, however B never bragged about her wealth. She knew she was wealthy and it was clear based on the name brand clothes she wore among other things, but she had so much compassion for others, her clothing didn't matter. B was also incredibly outgoing. In a sense, I believe she kind of helped me become a more outgoing person. I distinctly remember one day we danced around her hotel room without a care in the world. I was quite self conscious at the time, and this became a completely new side of me. I realized how much fun it was just to be myself. There were days when visiting monuments that B and I would make new friends. We would talk to other people in line with us, learning their stories as they learned ours. To say the least, it was great.

    During this particular conference, my grandfather passed away. This was especially hard for me as I never was able to say goodbye. From the time I heard the news, I was a wreck. But then B stepped in. The empathy B showed for me was true. Many people can tell me they are sorry for my loss. But are they really?

    People like B are those who seem to come into ones life, change it, and then disappear. With the distance between us, we no longer talk. But I am so glad I met B, who showed me the true meaning of being myself.