There’s some debate as to when exactly we become the person we’re expected to be. Are we predetermined to become the person we grow up to be from genetics or the social environment we’re born into? Or can we actually change what’s been laid out for us and become a person of our own making? Can we redo the make-up and evolve beyond it or are we stuck with who we are?

Some say it’s all about choices. J.K. Rowling said it: we are defined by not what we have or what we want, but with what choices we make in our lives. When you are living in a world as sensitive as this we are living in now, you are faced with daily decisions that may or may not do good to you in the long run. You eternally wonder if this would be better that the other one, or vice versa. Sometimes we feel grateful about one particular choice; other times we just feel like we’re caught in the middle and the looming of regret.

What do we do if we ever came upon the moment that we took the wrong choice?

Everyone has something to hide, something to lie about, even if it’s about whether or not you broke the expensive vase, if you’re the one who took the last cookie from the jar or whether you return the excess change. It can be flat out telling a falsehood, or not telling the whole truth. Either way, in any situation, someone always gets left in the dark. Lies build walls between people, walls that become harder and harder to tear down. They build up on one another, and become more complicated as the deceit and dishonesty builds. It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in them, and veil whatever we have done wrong. Some feel they must lie to others to get ahead. Others feel it is necessary to lie to themselves in order to hide from the truth.

And after all, what is a lie? It is but the truth in masquerade. A wrong choice in hiding.

I used to think Barbie dolls were the interpretation of the perfect life. A doting mother Barbie, loving father Ken, all living in a two story white house with a white picket fence and a golden retriever and their daughter Kelly. Boy, was I wrong. Once reality came to slap me in the face awake, gone was the dream and the innocence and I was forced to make one gesture: a choice. Do I keep on dreaming or do I face the real world?

The world is filled with lies. Filled with people who are constantly has something to hide. Filled with people who won’t tell the whole truth, who can’t make the right choice, despite the opportunities given to them.

In any case, whoever we’ll turn out to be in the near future, we can only hope that we like the person we are or, at least, that we can stand to face ourselves most of the time.

But sometimes, when we can’t, all we can do is try to change anyhow and will ourselves to start over and make a clean cut. Hoping it won’t scar us for life.

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wrote this before i entered university.