It’s very hard to know who you are to other people. You can only see who you are to yourself. To the best of my assumptions, I might say that when people who know me well (I’m not naming names) think of me, they might think of anything like the Yankees, baseball, basketball, football, or something like that. That is what I think of. These are sports that I follow, watch, and play competitively. They are my identity. I cannot speak for anyone else, but they are things that I can be proud of; they make me who I am.
Of course it is barely three weeks into the school year and I don’t know a lot of people and a lot of people don’t know me that well. But if there’s one thing I want people to think about me, it is that I always want to put others before myself. I am not always able to do that, but I try to the best of my ability to give more than I receive. I don’t want any appreciation; I always say that the greatest fulfillment in life is paying it forward: doing for someone that someone else has done for you. I don’t know who said it, but my father told me it, “Heroes earn their medals, real heroes earn their medals and don’t step up to claim them.” That is what I like about paying it forward; it’s not about honor or appreciation, it’s about the sole satisfaction of helping someone.
