I think hedonism is important, but it comes at a cost. The candle the burns twice as bright and all that. At the same time if you never fuck around, you'll never find out.

I think far too often young people go through life thinking they already know who they are, instead of treating life as an opportunity to find out who they are. They become calcified, ossified in their beliefs about their own identity, a constant and repeated telling themselves of who they are in an effort to believe these things.

An alternative approach is to try to break down who you are, repeatedly and continuously. To try new things, to change the situation. Leave a city without warning and move somewhere you don't know the language. Abandon your belongings, your phone, your identity and start over. Change the situation entirely. Begin to understand what is you and what is the world. If you move from place to place, and you find yourself always confronted by the same types of people, maybe you are seeing a reflection of something you are bringing with you from place to place.

There is a very western identity of "knowing" who you are while simultaneously having done no exploration of who that person might be. I find it very curious.