Reflective Essay

On being different

A couple of days ago I was on the bus commuting to work when a hawker selling bookmarkers offered me one which read: Being different is one of the most beautiful things onearth, Embrace your ‘you’ness. Without hesitating, I bought it since it reminded me of something my father had told me several years before and which I hadn’t been able to make head or tail of atthat moment. Only through the reading of that bookmarker could I get the message of what my father had tried to instill in me ever since I was a little girl.

It was my father’s birthday and Iwanted to surprise him by baking the same cake his mother would bake for him when he was a little boy. I remember asking him if the cake tasted something like grandma’s. To my amazement, he answeredthat it didn’t, as it wasn’t grandma’s. He said it was different because it was the cake I had baked. I asked whether it was good different or bad different, to what he replied: ‘Good different, ofcourse! Different is always good! I have never expected your cake to taste like my mother’s!’ What a nugget of wisdom! Too bad I got angry at that moment.

It’s striking to me how, without beingaware, parents pass on values about what it is to be different. Most parents bring their children up in the belief that we are all the same, perhaps in the thought that they are teaching them to respectthe others or perhaps because they want to protect their sons and daughters from the harmful comments their so-called friends can make about them. Everybody knows how heartless children can be whencriticizing their mates. However, giving the issue some thought, I don’t think that the everybody - is - the - same lesson is a good one to teach. Are we really all the same? Not indeed! So, what is itso bad about being different? Why don’t parents encourage their kids to be comfortable in their own skins? Why don’t they teach them to share their similarities and celebrate their differences? To...