We are afraid to be like everyone else.
Our actions are driven by this fear: to be incomprehensible to others, and therefore to be rejected, to be rejected.
But you will be covered with horror, when the truth suddenly appears before you: you spend your only life in becoming as clear as possible, predictable, and not surprising.
No surprising.
Could something be worse?
Four years ago, I read an article somewhere about Wilson Bentley, the first photographer to take snowflake photos. The very same photographer who, in the course of his experiments, came to the conclusion that there are no two identical snowflakes.
The society immediately romanticized this idea of originality, made it cloyingly sentimental. Naturally, transferring the qualities of originality to people.
The propagated sweet truth: "We are all unique, like snowflakes."
But in fact, people are most afraid in life of being unique, different, unusual. Everyone wants to be a copy of someone who is already there.
Stop doing that.
Translate your view from others to yourself. Look at you. Watch yourself as the protagonist of your favorite series. Do you like yourself? Do you like this character? Does it cause you delight and admiration?
So he goes to the subway, buried in the phone, killing time, just not to think about anything, just not to be alone with himself.
This is you. The same "unique snowflake."
Nearby, crowds of people with empty, bored eyes sit, stand, ride, also buried in their phones. They, like you, are "unique snowflakes."
How do you differ from them? What is your uniqueness?
Do you love more than others? Do you have the courage to talk about things that you don’t need to keep quiet about? Do you have more wisdom to keep silent about what you should not talk about?
Did you cry not from grief, but from the fullness of life?