I'm not the same as I was last year let alone ten years ago when I was a hopeful, bright-eyed, wonder-filled little girl seeing the world through rose-coloured specs. I'm not a different person-just a different version.
I think it's safe to say that I am now a product of society. I guess we all grow out of the haze of childhood innocence and naivety probably around the years on which I travel on now. I contorted and twisted the way I spoke, worked, played, thought and dreamed to fit the paradigms of being socially-acceptable, even highly regarded.
It doesn't take long to realise that in order to avoid becoming a social out-cast who stands out for the wrong reasons, you have to conform. And so we do. Quite unconsciously, actually. That's probably the scariest part. I like to imagine everyone walking down an enormous highway (some people are going sideways and diagonally and all sorts of funky directions but at the end of the day everyone's moving forward) and we begin the walk as soon as we're born. And as we walk, we grow and we change. And part of that change is the gradual shedding and letting go of all the quirks and personalities we naturally developed as a child. They slip unknowingly between our fingers, fall from our back pockets, untangle themselves from our hair and it all falls, on the ground, left behind as we keep moving onward.
It's terribly sad to think of all the goodness and uniqueness and purity that we all leave behind on this road to an easy, 'successful' life.
Awkward interrupting disclaimer: I know it's close-minded and simplistic of me to narrow all the blame towards 'society' but to be honest I'm too tired to go into who is to 'blame' for anything and I think that is it's own separate post.
Over the years I've become more eloquent in my use of language, more diverse in my knowledge of the past and present, more aware of my emotions and the way the world works in general.
But I've also lost the creativity that once came so naturally to me. I've forgotten how simply sit and do without wild fears, uncertainties and emotions distracting me and plaguing my thought process. Even though it is now full of facts and names and dates and explanations, my mind has never felt more unhealthy.
It's also sad to think that people have to change who they are in order to please society's standards and expectations. We don't trust what we don't understand and it has been a reoccurring habit of humans to criticise and condemn and dismiss what is new and unique and strange. There is something frightening to us about a person who speaks and acts and thinks differently to what we've defined as 'normal'. Racism is just one extreme of not being able to see through another person's eyes and only trusting your own view of the world. I think empathy is so important and yet we do nothing to teach our children. Growing up, if I wanted to learn about true compassion and empathy over sympathy, I would have to go out of my way and conduct my own research online and in books and from older, wiser people. I have never been taught compassion in the classroom and that's just one of the many reasons I begin to question the validity and effectiveness of the current school system.
I think it's time to put aside this mold that we think everyone should conform into and instead celebrate and embrace and nurture each and every person's individuality. Stop making people leave behind the very essence of who they are to make room for who others think they should be. If we stop following these unwritten rules of bland and boring equaling good and right then maybe, just maybe, we'll see a brighter world full of more honest, more true, more human, humans.
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