How Jon Snow Inspired Me to Be Myself

When you are a child and are asked the daunting question, “what do you want to be when you are older?” you are initially left in a state of confusion. I know I was.

When I was first asked this question at around 6 years old, after minutes of contemplating what I wanted to do with my life, I had told my mother, in a rather confident manner, that I wanted to be a pro-wrestler. Every Monday and Friday night, I would sit in front of my television for hours watching wrestling on my television screen. However, my mother would always comment on how I was never truly interested in the wrestlers when they were dropping elbows or body slamming each other. Rather, I was deeply interested in the segments when the wrestlers were on the microphone performing their scripts. In the wrestling community, this is called “cutting a promo.”

Fast forward a few years later, when I was around 10 years old, I no longer wanted to be a Pro-Wrestler. Now, I was interested in becoming a script writer for a wrestling program. I would sit in my room for hours writing down a script of wrestlers cutting the promos I wrote for them. At this point, I did not dare to tell anyone that I would do this, as my 10 year old self knew deep down that being involved in wrestling was an unrealistic goal.

When I was 12, my sixth grade English Teacher gave us a creative writing assignment, where my task was to write about anything I wanted. This time however, I put wrestling aside, probably because I was too embarrassed to write about it, to write something more socially acceptable. So, I wrote a short story about a child growing up and becoming a writer. In my story, I wrote primarily about how this writer was told he could not write for a living, and he ultimately proved his doubters wrong. My teacher loved my story, so much that she asked me to read it aloud to the class the following day. I told her that I did not want to do it. When I went home that same day, after some convincing from my mother, I decided I would walk into class and confidently read my story aloud. So, the next morning, when I arrived at school, I read my story to the class. When I finished, everyone clapped, even my teacher. Naturally, I assumed everyone was just being nice, primarily because deep down I knew this was not the peak of my potential.

Nevertheless, ever since then, I loved to write. I wrote about everything I could from fiction to politics. Whatever the subject was, all that mattered was that I was creating a dialogue that was authentic. I was extracting a part of my soul and putting it down on paper.

However, as most stories go, I believed deep down that writing was not a way to make a living. I had observed my parents, two immigrants that had respectable jobs, make a living in an office or blue collar job. To follow in their footsteps, at 16, I began to have aspirations of becoming a lawyer. When I professed this aspiration to my mother, her eyes lit up. Being an immigrant, she wanted nothing more than her son becoming a lawyer and making a ton of money. Soon after, I joined my High School’s Mock Trial Team. Joining this team put many expectations on me. These expectations helped me in performing well in each of our competitions. At the end of my High School Mock Trial run, I had won two championships. Adding even more expectations, from my family, friends and teachers on my shoulders.

To add on even more expectations than before, after confessing my "dreams" to become a lawyer, my father had told me that his grandfather had been a very successful lawyer in India. In fact, he gained most of his success as a lead advocate in the famous India-Pakistan Partition in 1947. After my father told me this about his grandfather, he professed that “being a lawyer was in my blood.”

Needless to say, if you want to become a lawyer, you need to attend college. So, I applied to colleges across the country at the end of my senior year, and I am currently studying Political Science at a beautiful University in Canada. Once again, this has added even more expectations on me than ever before. Perhaps because I am one step closer to becoming the Lawyer everyone wants me to be.

So, how does my long drawn out story about my life correlate to Game of Thrones? Because although I did not realize it when this show first aired, my story is very similar to Jon Snow’s. However, in Jon’s story, he liberated himself of all expectations bestowed upon him. In my reality, I am still wrestling with them.

When we first meet Jon, he is not revered by his immediate family, let alone the entirety of Winterfell. We had come to know Jon as a bastard, someone who is not a real threat to any monarchical power. Jon has virtually no expectations at this stage of his character development; however, he is still expected to act, speak, and carry himself in a manner appropriate for a bastard. As the series continues, Jon takes on more and more expectations. From leading an army, to being the King of the North, to leading the charge against the white walkers, ultimately, the expectations on Jon’s shoulders progressively become larger as his character grew. The final expectation however, the one that carries the most weight in his life, is his bloodline. Everything Jon Snow thought he knew, turned out to be false. Jon Snow was not Jon Snow. Jon Snow was Aegon Targaryen, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

Once again, this added an abundance of expectations on Jon. For an entire season, he was forced to confront the expectations of his bloodline. Many characters wanted him to assume the role of a king and be the protector of the Seven Kingdoms. After all, Jon is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, making him destined, by birthright, to sit on the Iron Throne and assume the most powerful title in Westeros. However, as mentioned before, Jon, as we fundamentally know him, was bred through humble beginnings. He has never been in a position of absolute power. Although monarchical power is familiar to Targaryens, many individuals, including some of the audience, seem to forget that it is not familiar to Jon Snow. If there is one key take-away from Jon Snow’s character arc, it’s that one's banner, or their lineage, does not dictate who they are. Instead it is up to the individual, in this case, Jon Snow, how he wants to live his life, and in the end, he chose exactly that.

Jon could have chosen power. He could have woken up the dragon within himself and burnt cities to the ground. He could have kept individuals in their chains and dictated their futures. He could have given up Jon Snow and took the identity of Aegon Targaryen. However, he did not choose the fire and blood within him, rather, he did what he has always done. Stay true to himself. So, after being forced to take the cloak in the Night's Watch in the final episode, he chose not to stay. Instead, as the last scene shows, he travels beyond the Wall with the Wildlings, who are a symbol of freedom, to leave his expectations behind him. He looks back at the wall, knowing he is leaving behind everything that tried to define him, then continued to walk north, choosing freedom over expectations. Jon Snow ultimately was responsible in breaking his own chains, and liberating himself once and for all.

Both Jon and I are victims to overbearing expectations bestowed upon us by others. However, after watching Jon leave those expectations behind, I knew what I had to do. Like Jon, I had to let the expectations not dictate my life. I had to choose what I wanted to pursue, not what was expected of me. I had to become responsible for my happiness and find my purpose through writing.

Most importantly though, Jon Snow’s story inspired me to be myself, because if I continue to live somebody else's life, I will lose any authenticity still left within me. So for that, thank you to the writers, cast, crew and fans of Game of Thrones.

I will forever be grateful.