We live in an age of imitation—borrowed aesthetics, recycled culture, and copy-paste personalities. But real change isn’t about pleasing them. It’s about reclaiming yourself.
Prefer to listen? Hit play below for the full audio version.
No One Has a Personality Anymore
Yeah, sure—you can figure out your Myers–Briggs type in 16 questions. ENTJ, INFP, whatever. But wait a minute. Does that really keep us satisfied? No. Because personality today feels less like discovery and more like borrowing and stealing.
And I mean that figuratively, too. We all want what Gen-Next influencers are wearing. In my head I’m a celebrity, clicking perfect angles at Instagram-worthy spots, strutting like I was born a model.
But here’s the catch: I don’t even know how to be me. I only know how to want what everyone else has—the latest bags, the new Tabi shoes everyone went crazy for, or to film myself wearing dapper fits, slaying, and uploading it to YouTube titled “A Day in My Life”—because everyone else is doing it, so I have to, too.
Everyone wants to “explore,” but only the places already commercialized, stamped with celebrity approval, designed for selfies. No one wants to step out of their comfort zone, discover hidden gems, or take the road less traveled. We’ve mistaken following the map someone else drew for exploration.
Borrowed Faces, Borrowed Lives
Take me as an example. They say people you spend time with somehow influence you. I agree. But not so much that they dissolve into my personality.
I’m lactose intolerant. I plan my meals accordingly, so I consume plant-based milk. But then people around me—who aren’t even lactose intolerant—suddenly decide they must switch too, because they’re around me. Why? Why do they have to copy my preference as if it’s their new lifestyle?
Copying my plant milk isn’t really the point. It’s about how easy it’s become to copy whole personalities the same way.
Swap one detail, one habit, one “aesthetic,” and suddenly you’re living in someone else’s skin.
That’s the problem: we’re not building ourselves anymore, we’re assembling collages of other people’s choices. Borrowed diets. Borrowed clothes. Borrowed playlists. Borrowed attitudes. It’s not personality—it’s patchwork.
And it’s not just us. Look at culture right now. All the trends in fashion, movies, and music are just reemerging from the past. Remakes, reboots, recycled aesthetics. Like—where is creativity? Is it dead?
Maybe that’s why everyone’s always begging someone else to change. Not because they care about growth, but because they’re addicted to swapping identities, trading old skins for newer ones, without ever touching their core.
We’ve mistaken replication for expression. That’s why I started making my own work instead of borrowing. Here’s a glimpse — my latest zine:
https://gum.new/gum/cmevpqkge003804ib5yc2ecex
The Martyrdom Trap
This copy-and-paste culture leaks into our relationships too. People demand you change—your attitude, your tone, your choices—not out of care, but because they need you to mirror their worldview.
That isn’t change. That’s control.
And when you bow to it, you’re not evolving—you’re erasing yourself. That’s the martyrdom trap: change for others, validation from others, identity outsourced to others.
In psychology, it’s often said that what we despise in others is the shadow we need to accept in ourselves. So when people beg you to change, what they really mean is: “Fix the part of me I don’t want to face.”
Their limitations, their worldview, is not yours to carry. People will perceive you how they want to—with the image they’ve already created of you. Their refusal to thrive, to adapt to environments, is their job, not yours to fix.
Keep outgrowing. Keep evolving. Let’s be honest: the worst people can do is bark. Meanwhile, the silent ones are out here doing the work.
While everyone else is recycling, I’m creating. Here’s a piece from my latest poetry collection:
Real Change, Real Fire
True change is raw. Messy. Inconvenient. It doesn’t happen because someone begged, guilted, or commanded you into it. It happens because something inside you refuses to stay the same.
Real change is when you finally say:
I am over shoplifting my soul, just to reach a credit which has no limit.
That’s the end of borrowed identities. That’s where authenticity begins.
So yeah, everyone wants you to change.
But here’s the truth: most of them don’t want you to grow. They want you to adjust, to fit their borrowed scripts, so they can stay comfortable in their illusions.
Change like that isn’t evolution—it’s erasure.
So the question isn’t will you change?
The question is: who are you changing for?
Because if the answer isn’t you, then you’re not changing at all. You’re just disappearing.
I originally published this on Medium, but I refuse to let platforms own my voice. This blog is my archive—my corner of the internet where authenticity stays intact. Thanks for being here.
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