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Just Because You Look Weird Doesn't Mean that You're Actually Different |
Today in English Honors Composition, we were subjected to John Mill's Genius and Originality, of which there was nothing either genius or original. In fact, it seemed to echo thoughts that I had written back when I was fourteen. Mills seemed enamored with those who would resist tradition almost mindlessly and start new trends of their own. Perhaps breaking with tradition was something worth noting in Mill's day, but it's hardly worth a glance now.
I attend a college, and not that long ago, I attended an American high school. You met all sorts of tradition breakers there, people who fancied themselves as being "as real as you can be". If it was tradition, they threw it out the window; if it was orthodox, it wasn't worth their time. They were different, they were strong, they were in-duh-viduals...and there were a lot of them. Suddenly, those of us who weren't afraid of fading into the black night were the minority.
The difference between Mill's individual and today's individual is fairly simple; Mill's individual was easy to pick out of a crowd.Today? The person who will stand out in a crowd the most is the one who isn't trying to grab your attention.
I have found that perhaps the only way to be really different in this world populated with goths, punks, emo kids, white trash, gangsters, gangster-wannabes, tortured artists, and every other in-duh-vidual out there, is not to try to defy labels, but to not try to not defy labels (tangent--I like convoluted sentences). In slightly more clear terms: be comfortable with the fact that you might do- or even be- something unoriginal.
There is a certain level of conformity necessary to be a member of society. One particular teen subculture that I have to tip my hat to is the "preps"(an ambiguous term that the in-duh-viduals use to label anyone that they dislike, usually rich kids who don't mind the fact that they're ambiguous)-- at least they're consistant. I'm not saying that you should go out and become an Abecrombie clone- God forbid I ever say that- or anything like that, but you have to realize that the weirder you look, no matter how many other "weird" people there are out there, you're going to be a pariah to those of us who have the common sense to realize just how stupid you look. We don't want to work with someone who is going to be a distraction in our peripheral vision.
I'm not saying that you should "cramp your personal style", but don't go all out and shave your head into a mohawk just for the sake of being different. That is the problem at its core: different for the sake of different isn't genius, it's stupidity.
I don't know what I've been trying to say for the last 460-odd words-- I guess that all that it really is is that I'm tired of weird for the sake of weird, or cool for the sake of cool. Being different doesn't make you any more "real" than not being intentionally weird makes me "fake", or just another "sheep blindly following the facist perpetuated capitolist system". As far as I can see, all of these in-duh-viduals are nothing more than lonely or misguided people seeking either attention or acceptance by forcing themselves into believing that they are being true to themselves by being as strange as they possibly can.
Since this particular piece isn't going anywhere, I'm gonna wrap it up with something that I've been saying for a while, and will continue to say until it's heard: I'm content with knowing that I have an identity that isn't tied with how I look or directly related to some political cause or genre of music or style of clothing; it shows that I'm well-rounded. I don't have to pull off this act of moral superiority because I think that I'm "as real as you can be"; life is not meant to be a contest to see how many lines you can plagerize from Catcher in the Rye and pawn them off as your own thoughts.
Do you really want people to think of you as the next Holden Caulfield?