Aanya Gandhi
Humans of YJA: April 3rd, 2021
“A couple of months ago, I had this epiphany while watching Moana. I was explaining the movie to my Masi from India who was sitting next to me asking, ‘what is Moana like? Who is she?’ I described Moana as this fearless girl who knows her worth, what she loves, and she goes after it. As I went to bed that night, it hit me that I wanted to be like Moana. I wanted to be that girl who knows what she’s after, follows her dreams and passions, and doesn’t let her insecurities get in her way.
So as I sat in my room and reflected on the movie, it just hit me that I was so tired of being insecure. It felt like rock bottom. My entire life I had kind of gotten into this cycle of self pity and insecurity, and at that point, I realized I couldn’t go anywhere but up. I read a quote somewhere that said ‘we can’t become what we can’t see.’ And that really struck me because I was like, so much of my life has been wanting to be something that I can’t see. I decided to challenge myself: I wanted to just try to not be insecure.
That night, I got on Instagram and started talking to people on my story. I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m coming on here for, I have no script, I just wanted to talk about how I felt after watching Moana and also just to tell you my insecurities. I’m telling you guys because I want to get it off my chest.’ I woke up the next morning with a flood of DMs thanking me for sharing this. Now that I was letting out these insecurities to people, I was becoming more confident in myself.
Since then, I’ve been continuously posting on my Instagram story, just talking about my insecurities. I’ve even recorded a video of me crying once because I’ve become more of an advocate that we need to see these sides of people — social media shouldn’t be all about perfection; it should also be about the imperfections.
And I’m realizing now, the moment you start loving yourself and you open yourself up to the world, the world will start loving you right back.”
— #HumansofYJA, 6: Aanya Gandhi
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post belong solely to the individual highlighted in this story. To learn more about this project, visit yja.org/humans.
