“Who am I?” – A question every man in the world face someday in their lifetime. At first, it may appear as an idiotic question not even worth an answer. But this might actually be the key question in life and in fact, the trickiest to reach a satisfying answer.
It is true to say that not a single person in this world has no desires. Most of us are rather greedy, wanting to be content at all times. So how can we lead a satisfying and happy life, a life which we can feel proud at the end?
The two weeks of Writers’ Fortnight provided me the opportunity to listen to inspiring stories from five speakers. All five of them had two things in common. One was how they all seemed confident, satisfied and proud about themselves and their lives. Their satisfaction were nearly palpable through their demeanour. The other was what answered my question: they are all doing what they want to do, being who they truly are.
Be ourselves – This may seem to be an easy task. However if it really is, the majority of us must be as proud and fulfilled as those five speakers were. Are we? We are not. What is making this so difficult?
The biggest obstacle we face in being ourselves may be our over-consciousness on how we want to be seen from others, or rather, our fear of being different. “It is easy to follow hashtags, but it is important to be different,” claimed Marc Nair, a Singaporean poet, during his talk. People tend to lean towards the majority, favour the majority, even if it is not their true stance. Who has never hesitated voting for the minority in class discussions? Who has never chosen what their close friends had, even though it is actually different from their will?
Throughout our lives, we are making constant decisions in our actions for the better future we seek to live. Our decisions would purely be based on our natural desires – if we lived in solidarity. But yes, humans are a social animal; not a single man can live without another person. And what hinders and manipulates our decisions – peer pressure, cowardice of being different, and the urge to be “the same” – are all downright inevitable in human interactions. As long as we interact with others, we will feel this fear, and, often without even noticing, choose to be with the majority.
Thus “Following hashtags” is a perfect way to describe how most of us live. The trends, somehow, always appear “cool” to our eyes. “I can’t miss out!”, we would feel, unable to resist checking social media. This is now widely known as FOMO – fear of missing out -, and a survey revealed that 56% of the people feel afraid to miss out events and updates on social networks (Murphy, S. 2013). Our fears of being “left out” may be far more massive than what we imagine.
In a larger scale, this may have strong connections with the discrimination of minorities, a controversial issue of the modern world. Christina Lau, a mouth-painter with her body under her chest paralysed, talked about the struggles of being a disabled person, a minority in the community. “They (people) look at me in different ways, they do compare.” She mentioned about her struggles of finding a job after being paralysed, as “Singapore doesn’t hire disabled people.” – Perhaps because of the community’s biased perceptions on the disabled. Indeed, Christina herself confessed how she had thought that “the disabled need a lot of help” before being paralysed.
Fearing to be the “odd one”, we tend to stick with similar people and dislike others who are different. Hence our viewpoints are biased, and stereotypes on people different from ourselves are inevitable. To a question asking the amount of prejudice people feel against the disabled, 53% answered “a little”, 26% “a lot” (Staniland, L. 2011). This restraint towards people with differences is perhaps reflected in the unemployment rate: statistics shows that in 2016, a mere 4.6% of the general population of the U.S. were unemployed, yet the rate raises up to 10.5% – two and a half times higher – for the disabled (O’Leary, L. and McHenry, S. 2017). Our groundless perceptions are not the only cause. We also lack in knowledge of different people from others. Most importantly, we lack in bravery in trying to understand those different people. Undoubtedly we believe that the majority is always correct. The minority? Wrong or weird.
Other than discrimination, our fear of being different is evident through the various interhuman conflicts we face in our daily life, such as exclusion and bullying. Indeed, amongst the 1600 teenagers involved in a research conducted by the Anti-Bullying Alliance, 52% admitted that they feel worries about being seen as “different” (Henshaw, P. 2017). As long as these atrocities exist, our fears will never diminish. However, as long as we fear, these problems will remain, as our tendency to “stick with similar people” are the causes of these issues. This is why being ourselves is such an ordeal and, as a result, we lie to ourselves to run away from our fears of being the oddball in the society.
But without being our true selves, we will never be fully content or happy. We feel the greatest joy when we are doing what we truly want to do. The act of lying to ourselves is just an accumulation of stress and discomfort. So we must understand. Difference shouldn’t be considered negative – it is uniqueness. As Marc Nair said, it is important to be different from others, even from the majority. After all, we are all different; our likes and dislikes, values, dreams, perspectives are different from each other. Like snowflakes, no one can and will never be identical. Then why do we have to “follow hashtags”, fearing to be different from others if we are already different from the first place?
We must have the courage to be who we are, to be different from others. On top of that, we must strive to build a difference-accepting community to allow people to be themselves more comfortably, without experiencing those fears of being “the odd one out”.
Take a moment to reconsider, “Who am I?”. If you can answer, follow your answer. If not, it is time to explore and discover what you truly want to do, what you truly want to be. Be yourself, be open to differences. Let us love our one and only lives.
REFERENCES
Henshaw, P., “Bullying: Young people admit to a fear of ‘being different’ ”, SecEd, November 2017. http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/bullying-young-people-admit-to-a-fear-of-being-different/
Murphy, S., “Report: 56% of Social Media Users Suffer From FOMO”, Mashable Asia, July 2013. https://mashable.com/2013/07/09/fear-of-missing-out/#yNo7VhUdViqH
O’Leary, L. and McHenry, S., “For people with disabilities, the unemployment is still pretty high”, Marketplace, July 2017. https://www.google.com.sg/amp/s/www.marketplace.org/amp/2017/07/21/life/people-disabilities-unemployment-rate-still-pretty-high
Staniland, L., “Public Perceptions of Disabled People”, The Office for Disability Issues, January 2011. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/325989/ppdp.pdf
Hi Hana,
Thanks for the opportunity to read your work and provide feedback. I think the photo you selected works well to support your writing, which poses many good questions.
A little background about me: I currently work in the medical device industry here in Singapore, but my previous career was in journalism. I spent six years as a reporter for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in Chicago, and have both a Master’s and undergraduate degree in journalism. All of the feedback I provide is intended to be helpful and constructive! Writing is such a critical skill and getting feedback – and thinking about it – is the best way to get stronger in your writing.
I didn’t spend time going line by line through your work, but instead would like to provide some high-level comments or observations. I’ll focus on three areas: citations and sources, making assumptions about the reader (versus ourselves)
CITATIONS AND SOURCES
When writing an article for a newspaper or magazine, citations are done directly in the text versus formal insertions as you have done. For example, instead of writing this:
“This restraint towards people with differences is perhaps reflected in the unemployment rate: statistics show that in 2016 a mere 4.6% of the general population of the US were unemployed, yet the rate rises up to 10.5% – two and a half times higher – for the disabled (O’Leary, L. and McHenry, S. 2017).
I’d instead suggest something like this:
According the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate was 4.6%, but for people with disabilities it was 10.5% – more than double.
Be careful citing other articles as you have done. You need to get directly to the real source of the materials, which in this case is not the writers of the article you found, but actually the Department of Labor. Anyway, the point here is that you write the citations into the piece directly as opposed to using a research paper format.
MAKING ASSUMPTIONS
I really like the start of your story – the question is a good one and captures my attention. But after that line, there are a number of statements that appear to reflect more about you versus the reader. For example, what if a Buddhist monk were reading? You can’t assume your reader will have the same perspective and opinions that you do. When you say that “most of us are rather greedy” it can almost come across as an insult to the reader. “What? I’m greedy? What gives?” And then something bad happens: the reader stops reading, and you can’t get your ideas across because the rest of the article isn’t even read through.
In terms of specific feedback for how to structure the start, I might suggest the following:
Who am I?
Five speakers at UWC’s recent Writers’ Fortnight event seemed to know the answer. They all were confident and comfortable, doing what they loved, not caring about the status quo.
Doing this removes some of the conjecture and “gets on with it” in terms of your article, getting more quickly into the heart of things.
I really liked the “follow hashtags” idea and wish there was more of this. What does it mean to follow hashtags? Are there hashtags that are actually supportive of doing something different and individuality? What would the speakers say? Might be cool to get more of this.
JOURNALISM
Writing in a journalism context is different than a research paper, as indicated above. For one, the sentences are typically shorter. The paragraphs are too. In fact, a single sentence can be a paragraph. With this in mind, think of ways that you can “thin” down your writing. Sometimes things felt a bit “thick” as the reader. Don’t think about word counts but instead make sure each sentence briefly and succinctly says what you want it to. When you think you need a comma, check to see whether you can use a period instead. This will help “end” the thought and also make things easier to read.
I hope the comments are helpful. I am happy to talk live, if you’d like, or exchange emails/whatsapp messages. Again, thanks for sharing your work and having the courage to put yourself out there.
Thanks,
Erik
+65-9656-2479
erik.ahlberg@gmail.com
Eeek, I “lost” my third area for feedback when I clicked, but it should say “journalism-style writing” as the last point. I guess I need a good editor as well!