Being
Different
“Anyone
who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics,
psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from
others...On the other hand...you have Einstein, saying there was no
time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus insisting
on the other side of the world lay a continent, not an abyss. Or the
Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed
like people from another time. Those people—and thousands of
others—all lived in their own world.”
Paulo
Coelho—Veronika Decide Morir—Tapa Azul
Are you different? Do you
find it difficult to follow the crowd? Are you out of step with the
times? Great! You're in good company. This is not an indictment of
people who keep up with the times—we need them to define exactly
what the times are. Otherwise, how would we know we're out of step.
Truth is we all have our own value systems and motivations for being
who we are. Some of us want to reflect a certain charisma, a
particular standard, that's common to those of our chosen community.
We want to fit in and be welcomed as “one of us.” Some of us find
that sort of conformity suffocating. And some, are simply
iconoclasts, who would rather die than have any communion with the
collective. We need those too, though we give them a wide berth.
Being different is a good
thing. There was a segment on the news last night about a young man,
Mikey Brannigan, who's competing at the Paralympics in Rio. He's a
runner who happens to have autism. His speech was difficult, but when
asked whether autism had made him a better runner, he responded, “No,
a better person.” He won the gold medal in the 1500 meter race.
Being different has some
disadvantages, of course. It's lonely, for one. It's very hard for
people who are truly different to make themselves conform to the
norms of society, and therefore they often live on the fringe. As
with Einstein, communicating one's ideas and findings may leave
others in the dark. It may take decades for them to understand. But
we're not all Einsteins, and sometimes being different is just
painful.
The great advantage to
being different is being true to self. It is living your own life,
and not someone else's idea of who you should be. If one can get
comfortable being on the fringe of things, and putting the energy it
would take to be part of the collective into being authentically
creative and individual, there is no telling what might come of it.
You might even make a genuine contribution to the collective that
changes the direction of consciousness—like Joseph Campbell, or
Leonard Cohen, or Bill Gates, or Mahatma Gandhi, or....
In the Spirit,
Jane
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