Even Celebrities Need Humility

Tonight, I feel empty inside. I'm not broken, but I'm longing. I feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

Call me dramatic, but tonight, I watched the last episode of Gossip Girl ever and I finished the Great Gatsby. There is something about characters that lead rich and extravagant lives that entices us, draws us in, and makes us long to be a part of  their world.

I cannot help but find parallels between my personal life and the lives of the outsiders clawing their way in. Dan Humphrey, Gossip Girl's own lonely boy from Brooklyn, and Nick Carraway, Gatsby's curious neighbor, were not that different from each other...and not that different from me.

In high school, I was pretty odd. I designed my own clothes and had a quirky personality. I said things for shock value and I wanted to save the world. I guess I've become a little more "mainstream" since then.

I was never popular, but I've always been friends with popular people. I was everyone's favorite outsider.

When I came to college, I began to find myself. A year ago, I thought I had everything figured out, but little did I know, my journey had just begun. I had thought that one semester shaped me into the person I was meant to be, but I was only just getting started.

Second semester of my freshman year, I exploded. I got real involved real quick and I began meeting tons of people. The funny thing is that once you meet tons of people, you will always be meeting tons of people. You get a core group of friends who then introduce you to their group of friends and so on and so forth.

This fall, something odd began happening. I would see people, or rather people would see me. Strangers began knowing who I am and who I was friends with. Once in September, a friend introduced me to someone and she said, "I know exactly who you are."

Wow. I make jokes about being a celebrity, but when people started knowing me and noticing me, it shocked me. It still shocks me.

I had stepped up my game through fashion—reserving my peasant clothes to after-hours library sessions. I worked my networking skills. I even landed myself an internship that is a stepping stone to my dreams.

And last week, someone looked at me and said, "I want your life. Your life is perfect."

Um, what?

Somehow, somewhere along the way, I have made people think that I am the person worth knowing. I played the role of the coming-of-age misfit to social butterfly all too easily.

That's exactly what it was, too—a role. I created a role for myself in which I was the shining star, much like Dan Humphrey did for himself. He wrote himself into their world to prove to them that he was worth being there, to trick them into thinking he already was.

When you're playing a role, you learn one truth—you can't play forever. It is a role because it is meant to be temporary. It will either envelop you or release you into who you were before. Too often it's the former.

Blame astrology or seasons or whatever you choose, but different identities are easy for some people to swap and to switch, day in and day out. Though swapping identities or living a dual life may not be necessarily wrong, it is exhausting.

It's tiring convincing people you're perfect, even if that's not really what you're trying to do. It's tiring to live up to who someone else expects you to be, no matter what it looks like. No one is single-faceted and we cannot allow people to depict us like that.

You know what? I am a fashion blogger. I talk A LOT. I am dying to own a pair of Louboutin shoes. I like Lilly Pulitzer. Dancing gives me freedom. Bacon makes me smile. I could post memes of Gossip Girl all day long. I can quote every line of Mean Girls.  I love my sorority. ElleWoods inspires me.

You know what else? I acknowledge that I am nothing without Christ. I have high aspirations for myself which include law school. I love meeting new people, and taking time to just get to know them. I plan on being at least tri-lingual one day. I've been writing since elementary school. Late nineties alternative bands like Third Eye Blind intrigue me. I make really unattractive facial expressions when I'm alone with my friends.

My brother once said to me, "You're better than you believe, but not as good as you think." He's right. I'm capable of so much more than I believe. I am a child of God, and a blessed one at that. However, I am not God's gift to the world (or even my university).

These words are true for you as well. No matter what your personal beliefs are, know you are worth something in life. Know you are capable of achieving great things, but know which things in life are lasting and which are fleeting. The approval of man won't last forever and it won't keep you whole.

Dan Humphrey may have gotten what he wanted in the end, but what did he have to sacrifice to get there? What do we sacrifice to achieve our dreams? What if we realized that achieving our dreams could mean something?

What if our dreams change? What if our dreams become someone else's dream and we are able to make a miracle happen?

With the impending holiday season, it doesn't seem right to act selfish and live our lives as if we reign inside our own world. How are we going to choose a role that means something this holiday season? How can we take the conflicting sides of who we are and morph them into a person with not only integrity, but power and passion?

This year, (given the world doesn't end on Friday) I'm going to take the superficial qualities I seem to possess and use them alongside my more practical qualities. My ability to make friends is so much more than a quest for new closets, but can be an opportunity to reach out to a variety of people that are broken.

I look at the world and what's happening, and I can't help but think all the superficiality, and most of the practicality, in our lives is futile. Children are being shot in their classrooms, people are starving, dying--everyday. Let the real reflection be what can we do with what we have? What can we give?

Let's be honest—we're all takers here.