Singer, dancer, actor. That’s what the world sees me as. A girl with big dreams too extravagant for a narrow-minded world. But why should I change myself for a conformity that hasn’t been patient enough to learn my identity? It is discouraging that in this day and age, we (in particular as women) are judged and labelled as one dimensional beings.

I'm not just one thing. I’m not just a singer, just a dancer, or an actor, but a person who loves to help others, a girl who really enjoys maths and science. I'm a person who commits almost every inch of my time to practise my passion; the arts. I’m sure you’ve all heard that the arts ‘are a way to express yourself” and that ‘your passion is a fire within you,’ but it’s bigger than that. It’s part of who I am.

But it’s no more me than any of my hobbies, my friends, or my drive to learn and become a better person. A passion should not disguise you from the world as a shallow shadow of a person. It shouldn't be the first and only thing that ‘narrow-minded people’ see.

I never imagined that I would be writing an article about one of the biggest struggles poorly represented in our society, or the fact that my story would be told in a way that feels most unnatural to me. But I chose to step out of my comfort zone so that others like myself can understand that even though our world often creates communities built upon an image of singular perfection impossible to live up to, this feeling of dissociation from your true self isn’t unique to you. Millions of others have felt the same.

So I challenge you, me, and everyone else who feels trapped within an ‘identity’ that society shaped out of stereotypes and a small-sighted mind, to show the world who you really are. That may mean uncovering a passion that you have hidden away for so long because you too believed that our current world would be too used to the comforts of prejudicial, short-sighted thinking.

Or whether you find yourself like me. Someone known only by her passion, wishing that people would instead lay aside our conformities. The ones where people strive to understand and accept everyone for everything they are, where they can be bothered to look beyond a first impression, uncovering each truth forcibly concealed by expired thinking in our ‘modernised’ world.

Only then will life become a canvas covered in colourful personalities that become a beacon of light in our world, shining the way for those to come next, walking in the same footsteps. Only this time, our society will have evolved into one that welcomes them the second they open their eyes.

Let us open the worlds’ eyes to a life of joy, where everyone expresses themselves because society doesn’t oppress them for it. If not for you, me, or everyone around the globe struggling with the same scenario, do it for the next generation. And then every generation after that, won’t have to.

Written by Jessica Wild.