Be yourself; everyone else is already taken-Oscar Wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

-Dorian Gray

Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wells Wilde

(October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900)

An famous Irish poet and playwright Late Victorian Period. His most famous work is The Picture of Dorian Gray. He faced trial after being convicted of gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

It is a story attacking the polite but hypocritical high society of the Victorian era and featuring the "sins" committed by the protagonist. It talks about a portrait of Dorian Gray drawing by his friend. He find that he is attracted by the beauty of himself in the portrait.

He want to keep the beauty he have now, so he choose to sell his soul, wish the person in the portrait will get old and fade for him. Then, the changes of the portrait records the sins he did...

The first publication of the story is in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine

It is Oscar Wilde's only novel.

It received a lot of controversy and criticism at the time. The allusion to homosexuality within the story also echoes the judgment it received later.

What is the meaning of "yourself"?

We should always be ourselves, shouldn't we? We have different goals and objectives, and we always have the idea: "I want to be like XXX". In this case, can you still define who you want to be, yourself or someone else?

Of course, it doesn't mean we can't make others our goals. On the contrary, it is good for us to have goals and motivation.

The only thing we need to be careful of is to understand what we really want to be, but not to blindly follow others. When we do not think about it and then lose ourselves, we are only trying to be someone else.

What we should do

Try to be yourself. If you have a goal, you can think carefully about whether this is achievable for you. If you're sure you want to be that way, find the way that works best for you to achieve your goal. This is the way you discover about yourself.

If you find that the goal isn't who you really want to be, then you may just be following someone else's wishes. Think again about whether you really want to be that person. If not, give up being someone else. Everyone else is already taken, be the only person you want to be, which is yourself.

Like Oscar Wilde, convicted for his well-known crime of gross indecency, he chose to do so despite the fact that his actions were not accepted by most of the public at the time. It was a way to "be yourself. Of course, since he was married and had children, he had faced different opposition, but for just sticking with the status of homosexuality, he certainly succeeded in being, as he put it, "yourself. And he has become a cultural icon for future generations of the gay community.