‘Self-awareness, noun: The conscious knowledge of one's own character.’

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 Staring at my father’s worn, college-era dictionary, one word caught my eye.

‘Self-awareness, noun: The conscious knowledge of one's own character.’

 

I grabbed a pen.

‘... one's own characters’

Ok, that looks better.

 ___________________________________________________________________________________

May 21, 2018. Seoul, South Korea.

I was "Captain." The student body president, the popular kid, the one who always leads others. I was gravitating others towards me, thinking I am the center of the universe. When my family needed to move to Mexico, I was confident I'd continue to lead.

___________________________________________________________________________________

September 11, 2020. Monterrey, Mexico.

One day at school, a boy named Juan snatched my bag and called me a stutterer. The words I needed to defend myself were trapped inside, and I ended up shouting a word no one could understand. The teacher, seeing my silence as guilt, made me apologize to Juan. I couldn’t explain myself—not in Spanish, not in English. I stopped talking. I stopped trying. I was afraid to face who I am.

___________________________________________________________________________________

March 10, 2023. Troy, MI, United States.

I started to understand myself differently. I wasn’t just the confident leader from Korea or the isolated outsider from Mexico. I was both.

___________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve lived with many “characters” throughout my life—like Marjan from English by Sanaz Toossi. On the outside, I was the confident kid, the one who could lead others. But beneath that was a quieter story—an inferiority complex that followed me across borders and languages.

Like Elham, I was angry—not at others, but at the silence that kept swallowing my voice. I used to sit in class, feeling my thoughts build up inside me, only to be released as fragmented, misunderstood phrases. I wasn’t dumb. I had answers. Ideas. Questions. But I couldn’t deliver them on time, in the right words, in the right accent. So, they stayed trapped.

There’s a line in English where Elham says, “I know who I am in Farsi. I’m smart in Farsi.” That hit me hard. I knew who I was in Korean. But the moment I crossed a border and opened my mouth in a new language, I felt like a blank page, like my mind had been erased.

And when I tried to speak and failed, people didn’t see it as a language barrier; they saw it as me. I became “the quiet kid,” “the weird one,” “the kid who doesn’t get it.” It was easier to play along, to admit defeat, to let them believe I was the stupidest student in class. That way, at least I wouldn’t have to disappoint anyone’s expectations.

But inside, I was begging for just one moment—one sentence—that could prove I wasn’t useless. That I had something to say. That I had worth.

Now, people tell me I’m good at math or physics. But did I really get better at those subjects?

No. The only difference is that I can now express my thoughts in English. I can ask questions, explain my reasoning, challenge an idea. Ironically, it was my improvement in language—often seen as the opposite of math or science—that changed how others perceived my abilities in those fields.

So… what defines me? Have I changed, or has the world just started to understand me?

I think I’ve changed because the world sees me differently. And that scares me a little.

We often say: “Don’t let society define you.” But how can we not, when even our self-definition is shaped by the feedback and validation we get from others? Our sense of worth, intelligence, personality—so much of it is filtered through society’s lens.

If someone behaves the same way in two different environments but is praised in one and rejected in the other, does that make them different people? No. The only thing that changed was how they were seen. And often, how they saw themselves.

That’s the real paradox: we want to be independent, self-aware, free.
But even our deepest sense of who we are—our “characters”—is shaped by the world we try to stand apart from.

And maybe, just maybe, being aware of that is what real self-awareness means.


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