“I had spent a lot of
time figuring out who I was, shaping myself, creating an identity and I thought
that identity was something inside of me that I projected outward and when I
was suddenly in a world in which nobody knew me and nobody understood me and
all those things, I started to realize that who we are is actually reflected
back to us by the people around us, by people who love us.
“You are suddenly in a
world where nobody understands why you’re there or what you’re doing or who you
are - you suddenly start to ask the same questions.
“So I was basically
widdled down to nothing. I felt like I
had no self. The beauty of that –
there’s a lesson there, right? There’s
this lesson – that our connections matter, that how we treat others matters,
that it affects their identity directly.
And there’s another lesson there as well. As I lost myself, I actually found myself
broken down to a point where I could learn faster than I’ve ever learned in my life."
-Michael Wesch
The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever
BYU Speeches
