“Be yourself. That's all you need to succeed”. I listen to it daily in all twitter spaces, and I agree.

But how to be yourself?

The only way there is: knowing yourself.

Isn't that a universal human purpose?

At least is a maxim of classical Greek philosophy.

But why? Why is it such a universal premise?

I think this is a good situation-excuse to tell you about my grandmother.

I learned the basics of drawing and painting with my grandma in the free time I had in the afternoons since my father and mother worked all day.

My grandma was a Fine Arts teacher, at that time a true punk who had to fight with her entire family to let her study and attend university. I remember my grandma saying that her father would have been filled with pride if his son aspired to be an artist. But of his daughter, the only thing he said was that she would end up becoming a whore.

Today these words are despicable to us and their violence would draw immediate attention. Turns out it's been almost a century and it's kind of hard to measure. But those words, at the time, were a slam of the door and a definite refusal.

If my grandma hadn't had the conviction of who she was, she wouldn't have made it.

This doesn’t mean that was easy to go through the loneliness and isolation to which her family subjected her.

If she made it and never regret her choice was because she knew herself and it seemed like an inevitable destiny. She knew to the bone that she was an artist and would die being one.

And this is the point: great willpower comes along with self-knowledge.

So dare to be honest with yourself. And always keep searching for answers to who you are because that question is never fully satisfied.

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I expressed some of this sentiment in a nft called "Glico Man".