Someone wise once said:
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
There is a paradox for you if there ever was one.
A long time back I wrote a post where I talked about why creatives should not worry about being unique when they are working on their craft.
That said, I am sure all of us, at some point of time or another, have been told to be ourselves to succeed at whatever it is we are doing. The subject has been explored ad nauseam in books and movies alike. Yet most of us find it difficult to be unique.
The reason is simple.
There were 7,777,217,178 people in the world at the time of writing this sentence, and the number is increasing by the second. The people who run the world cannot afford to have so many unique individuals in it. The world, therefore, conspires to make people conform to the norms and standards set by the society to maintain a certain status quo in it. It tends to take the individual and make him, or her, such an integral part of the society that it becomes difficult to differentiate one from the other.
The training to conform begins early on and soon the individual’s sole concern becomes to be judged vis-à-vis the society’s standards, and pass muster. Nurture begins to dominate nature, and soon we fail to see that on the micro level we are all unique.
Consider this: There are 7.8 billion people on the planet, but no two people have the same set of fingerprints. Similarly, there are other things that are unique to us and make us special. This uniqueness can be our biggest gift to ourselves, and to those around us. But, the thing about this gift is that no one can tell you what yours is. You have to find it for yourself.
What I can tell you is that you have it, and that the first step in discovering your uniqueness is to believe that you have it. Once you begin to believe it, you will not find it difficult to discover what makes you unique. So, here is me wishing you the best to be the unique you.
P.S. : If you have time you may want to read Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. It is a book that I highly recommend, and you can easily find a text or pdf version of the book on the Internet.
(Image by JoBischPeuchet from Pixabay)
What do you think?