You Deserve to be Different

Juie Divecha
Sep 4, 2018 · 7 min read

A few days ago, a friend and I were talking about our experiences back when we were in school. As adults, most of us tend to look back at school years with fondness and nostalgia, going over the ‘good old days’ like they were some of the best days of our lives. And when you look back to so many years ago, it is easier to remember just fleeting memories, or more specifically, the “good bits”. But my friend and I were not interested in talking about the good bits. We were up for a more real conversation, we wanted to talk about the difficulties or the not-so-good moments that shaped us into the adults we’ve become today.

Adults all around the world talk about discrimination on a regular basis. And yet we feel like the world isn’t talking enough about it. Hollywood’s recent scandals have set the ball rolling on sexual abuse at the workplace; influential figures are using every platform available to make people stand up and call out sexism, racism and discrimination. Start a conversation about facing discrimination at any point in your life in a room full of adults, and I can guarantee that you’ll have many a story coming up. There would be the exceptions, of course, but I’d like to believe that even a room full of entitled white males might have a hidden locker room story to share.

But it all begs one question — where do we even begin? Our conversation took us to the very roots of our story, our first brush with ‘discrimination’, before we even understood what the word meant. The villains in our story, too, were ignorant about the meaning and impact of their action. But children can be harsh without even realising it. It is so easy for a child to alienate one among a group just because they don’t like that child. Because that child is ‘different’. It’s so simple for a child to tell all their friends not to talk to ‘that one child who stinks’. It probably wasn’t even true to begin with. But you’ve put out that little seed of discrimination and now it has taken root in several influential young minds, who pick sides just because they don’t want to be alienated either. Imagine a five-year-old having to choose between two others. One looks like they have all the friends and the other looks like all alone and sad. You can’t expect a five-year-old to see different perspectives and empathise with the sad one or stand up to the bully. The child will choose the bigger piece of the candy — in this case, the bigger group. And thus begins the isolated child’s story of discrimination.

For my friend, it wasn’t just children who would frown upon her differences. Teachers, the moral police of youth, the custodians of our growth, have been no different. A teacher once choose a fair girl over my friend for the part of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in the annual play, just because my friend was dark. When I was younger, I was labelled off as being a brat or a nuisance by most of my teachers simply because I couldn’t sit still and distracted everyone around me. Only one decided to see past the ‘nuisance’ to diagnose the attention deficit hyperactive disorder that was well on display for educated, adult minds to see. Did you expect the child to stand up and voice that they was too much going on in their minds to be able to focus on what was being said to them? Did you expect the child to spot a possible condition that adults study about only in their late teens or early twenties? The adults monitoring me — and every child around me — were supposedly trained to spot such differences and aid them, not discriminate them. And yet, these were the adults who isolated the ‘different’ ones by excluding them from the populars. By making them ‘stand outside the classroom and think about what you have done’. By selecting less deserving people over them for all the things they were passionate about, just because they were different. By setting an example that trickled down among students, because the teacher for them was the bigger piece of the candy and the ‘different’ child was trouble. You denied that child opportunities, you curbed their ‘differentiating factor’ and you probably made life morbidly miserable for them.

The thing about us ‘different’ ones is also our unique ability to adapt better than the rest of you. We had a fairly early start in trying to ‘fit in’, so we would adapt our personalities, mould our behaviours to the group we were trying to fit in and find a ‘workaround’ to the differences that set us apart, made us ‘weird’ in your eyes. Of course, it would be hard for us to keep fighting our real selves so we did move from group to group, adapting and shaping our personalities at regular intervals. And that made us chameleons. Easily adaptable to all our surroundings. With personalities so fluid, that most of us remain unfazed by change today. Had we developed a sense of entitlement around our personalities, we would have found it harder to accept change. Some still do. Some get so bogged down by the discrimination they face, they retreat into their shells and never reveal their true selves to the world. Some embrace their differences and dare the world to question them about it. Some live in a middle ground, where they choose when to accept their differences and when to keep them hidden from judging eyes.

I remember a day back in school when my friends decided to leave me behind during a lunch break. It was so long ago, I don’t even remember why they decided not to hang around with me that day. All I remember was sitting in class alone during a lunch break, not knowing what to do. I decided to take a walk around the school and, five minutes later, found myself standing in front of the library. That day, I discovered a whole new world of friends; friends who would celebrate my differences, friends who would never leave me behind during a break, friends who were there for me whenever I needed them. At the age of ten, I discovered my true passion in life. When I look back at it now, I thank my lucky stars that I did, and empathise with every little child who wasn’t so lucky. What would I have done had I not discovered that library? What if I had just roamed the corridors alone, and that would define my life? I read about children who commit crimes or end up killing themselves, and I see a common thread — at some point, someone gave up on them. Someone failed to see the turmoil that churned through their young, troubled minds. Someone cast them aside for being different. And they never got that lucky break to discover their passion or interest like I did. They never found a way to mould the hurt inside them into something positive, something that gave them hope, something that calmed them down and helped them understand that they were not in this alone.

My only wish is that we, as adults, become more aware of our surroundings. We as adults, lead by example and celebrate the differences in each other. That we teach our young ones to embrace differences and never discriminate. Children grow up watching us at home, and teachers at school. They learn to discriminate from us. That one racist comment grandma makes at the dinner table, inviting sniggers from the rest of the adults present there, is enough to plant the first seed of discrimination. One generalising comment overheard by a child is enough for them to figure out what the bigger piece of the candy is, and shun the smaller, different one. If we, as adults, aren’t more mindful of our words and actions, how do we expect children to learn from us? How we do expect the discrimination to end? Doesn’t every single person living on the planet deserve to live a happy life? Do they really deserve to be shunned and isolated just because you feel their ‘difference’ is not a good one and yours is?

Each one of us comes with our own unique set of differences; if we didn’t, we’d be easier to recreate in factories and AI would have replaced humans a long time ago. But even advanced technology can’t replace us because it is our differences that give us power, these very differences that make us unique and help us thrive in this world. And it’s time we recognised these differences and made a conscious effort to be more inclusive and accepting about them. Did your son come out as gay? Celebrate the occasion for he was strong enough to share his true identity with you? Did your daughter fail a class? Try and understand what happened from her perspective before writing her off as a failure. Don’t try and fit them into a stereotype. Don’t ‘correct’ them when they do things differently. Instead, understand why they do what they do. Channelise their ‘differences’ in the right direction, give them more avenues to explore, help them discover their passions. Allow them to make their mistakes. For these mistakes will bloom into experiences, and these children will grow up having explored their full potential, achieving success in whatever they choose to do, simply because someone believed in them. Someone supported them. And most importantly, someone celebrated their differences and gave them room to bloom.