I always felt uncomfortable in life; uncomfortable in my own skin and from my first days at school the other children treated me like a stranger.
I was your archetypal teacher’s favorite, I got along with and respected my parents, and I did what I was told in school for the simple reason that I knew the teachers were in charge and I would have a very uncomfortable life if I didn’t. toward. Don’t do what you’re told. Even as a child I knew that when other people had power and authority, you wasted a lot of energy rebelling against something you were too small to change. Not that he could have said it so eloquently.
I used to hear the other girls moan and complain about the detentions and extra homework and wonder what they expected when they prided themselves on breaking the rules and being difficult. As you can imagine, I was a bit unpopular. The problem was that they were going against every ounce of logic in life and I could clearly see that they were going to hate the end result. More importantly, they would never win.
This went on in one form or another all my life, if I was good at something I was a braggart, if I was bad at something I was an idiot. If he wanted to do what other people wanted to do, he was right, if not, he was wrong.
Added to that, people saw a spark of potential in me and often accused me of playing small and pretending I was normal and yet they saw nothing extraordinary in me at all. In fact, for a long time I was leading a life I wasn’t proud of, so I was wondering where the heck they were finding this supposedly remarkable person capable of greater things and playing lowly and therefore annoying.
It was Hollywood superstar Nicolas Cage who explained it all to me. Not that he’s ever met him though, strangely enough, he has a house in my current hometown and it seems like everyone on the High Street has seen him except me.
I read an article about him and it said that he always felt geeky and weird, was bullied for being a nerd at school, and generally found it very difficult to get along with his peer group. He was talking to his mom about it one day and she said, “Nick, you may have to accept that you’re marching to a different drummer.”
That concept stopped me in my tracks. It was the first time I realized that people are not born equal and have a rhythm of life that can be completely different from what other people hear.
He had also never considered that he might have been born in one family and one area, but actually belonged to quite a different place. That while my family had lived a very similar life generation after generation, I wasn’t really meant to live that life.
When I was younger, that feeling wasn’t so much “I don’t want to live the life they’ve lived” as it was knowing that I wasn’t meant to live that life. There was an inescapable feeling in my mind that I was somehow different from my family, not better or worse, just different, and that I was going to walk a different path.
Have you ever thought about that?
If the people around you make you feel bad and denigrate your feelings and opinions, if they want one thing and treat you like a stranger for wanting something different, or for believing that you were born for something that is not a life like theirs, Have you ever considered that you are marching to a different drummer and should listen to your own beat? Try to think about it.
You see, there are people who are born to live what I will call a classic life (birth, education, friends, romances, jobs, marriage/partner, more jobs, house, mortgage, children, vacations, more jobs, more houses, more vacations, retirement). , death) and there are others who are born for greater adventures.
You may not be wrong, you may have a unique rhythm and be a born adventurer.
For whatever reason, we can be born in one country and yet feel like we belong somewhere else. We can qualify in a race and yet know in our hearts that we should have done something very different. We can play the guitar at school like nothing happened. know that we are destined to be Mark Knopfler or Eric Clapton. We can vaguely smear a sheet of white paper at school and yet dream of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We may feel bad about that dream just because others don’t have that dream.
Yet where would the world be if the big dreamers and believers had said “What me? Good grief, no, don’t be ridiculous!” Not Mark Knopfler, not One Direction, not Picasso, not Nicolas Cage, not Mother Teresa, not Martin Luther King, not Nelson Mandela.
The world would be a sadder, unhappy and less inspiring place without all the wonderful artists, musicians, actors, peacemakers, entrepreneurs, etc., who dreamed big and showed us that we too can dream big.
I would tell you that more than feeling bad, you should accept that the world is inspired by dreamers and you are one of them.
Accept that if you don’t get along with the people around you then neither you nor they are wrong, you just need to go out and find people who understand you. It’s no good banging your head against a wall trying to explain to people that they just don’t want what you want, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
Don’t be afraid, keep going, listen to your intuition and set your own pace. And remember the song “I Am What I Am” from the musical La Cage Aus Folles.
“I am what I am
I am my own special creation.
So come take a look
Give me the hook or the ovation.
It’s my world that I want to be a little proud of,
My world, and it’s not a place I should hide.
Life ain’t worth a damn
Until you can say, “Hello world, I am what I am.”
I am what I am,
I don’t want praise, I don’t want pity.
I beat my own drum
Some think it’s noise, I think it’s pretty.
So what if I love every feather and every sequin,
Why not try to see things from a different angle?
Your life is a farce until you can scream out loud
I am what I am!
I am what I am
And who I am needs no excuses.
I deal my own deck
Sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces.
There is a life, and there is no return or deposit;
One life, so it’s time to open your closet.
Life is worth nothing until you can say,
“Hello world, I am what I am!”
Repeat after yourself “I am what I am and I am exactly what I am meant to be. If I do what feels right, I will always be doing the right thing.”
deb hawken
Changing lives one word at a time
