Being Different
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Being different is never easy. Being different means being not afraid to stand out. It means not being afraid to be laugh at. Not being afraid to make mistakes.In life, its always easy to follow the norm. To follow the majority, gives you the sense of security. It is knowing that, if you're wrong, you have about another 100 people that are wrong with you. This, prevents us to be singled out among the crowd, which is largely embarrassing. However, if no one was to stand out, who could ever be a leader of the pack. Who could be special So, we have to ask ourselves, if everyone was to jump off a building, would you jump off too? A classic example, but it goes a long way to show the way to be different.
Being different here does not mean always being different for the sake of it, it means to think for yourself, and value, what is best for you. To value, what do you really want. If all man were to be living for ourselves, what's the point of following other's footsteps.
I have a older brother, who is going 21 now. By this august, he will be going off to study for university. My brother was a elite student in school, having a MSG of 1.0 in sec 4 and being the lead actor in the school Chinese drama play. However, what i am most proud of him was his choice to take up university in China. That is by no means as easy feat, needing to study economics in Chinese, but he was not afraid. What made him truly special was that, he too was accepted into National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Imperial College London among others. But he made the very brave choice to pursue what he wanted, in china. He believed that by studying in china, he would be different from the many graduates from the NUS, NTU and the UK. In that way, he was different. And he made a bold step towards what he perceives is right.
Personally, I have felt the pains of being different. And that memory, will forever be with me, bitter or sweet. I could still remember, in my Primary School days, it was all clear for me, friends and soccer mates. While my soccer buddies were made up of mainly guys, my friends in class were mainly the girls. Call it maturity or innocence, i preferred talking to girls, feeling closer. They were more sensitive, and less arrogant. I felt that, it was the better choice. But understandably, there were consequences to be faced. Forever to my primary school friends, i would be teased as a flirt, the guy who liked girls better. And till now, such insults would be thrown across jokingly. But that did not mean anything. I was different, I did what i felt was right. No matter the consequences, it did not matter.