The Pivot Year

by Brianna Wiest

A big part of finding yourself is discovering the pieces of yourself you first see in other people. The other human beings who embody something so familiar but seemingly out of reach, who can evoke within you the heaviness of envy or the lightness of inspiration—both equally attempting to guide you to self-realization. Please, whatever you do, never forget that what you observe in others is also dormant in you. You are not coming into knowledge of a space in which you lack but a space in which you are most primed to expand and grow. The tension is not the result of another person occupying what could be yours to stand in, but the revelation of how much you are suppressing that they allow to flow out of themselves—how much they are willing to embrace. Your ego will want to make people like this your enemies. Your soul knows that they are your teachers in disguise.