Don’t be afraid to be different

I enjoyed reading Stuart Kinzie’s contribution in an old Reader’s Digest about not being afraid to be different. This is an adapted version of what he wrote:

When I was a child, my parents sent me to summer camp. Part of our camper’s uniform was supposed to be a Boy Scout hat (low-crowned and wide-brimmed) that we had to wear every afternoon when we lined up for inspection. But my parents, through some catastrophic oversight, sent me off with one of those vintage U.S. Army campaign hats. It was wide-brimmed, but when I put it on, I was practically in total darkness. As for the crown, it seemed to rise half a mile straight up in the air. Whenever I wore this monstrosity, instead of being an inconspicuous boy, I became a freak. Or so I thought.

Looking back across all those years, I can now smile at the memory. It was no joke at the time, though. I was utterly miserable – simply because I was different from the others. There must be very few people who cannot recall such a childhood incident, and fewer still who do not carry some of this deep-rooted fear of being different into adult life. But if we value leadership, achievement and maturity, we have to overcome this childish concern.

The rewards of differentness are easy enough to see. No matter what field you choose, e.g. business, sport or entertainment – the demand is for individuals, whose performance is above average and therefore different. At any dinner party, the liveliest and most attractive guest is the one whose observations are stimulating because they are different.

The fear of being different, like most fears, tends to diminish when you take a good look at it. At the bottom of such fears lies an intense preoccupation with self. That Army hat, back in my childhood, might have caused some momentary fun or teasing, but the whole thing was too trivial to have lasted long. I was the one who kept it alive by agonising over it. Recognise self-consciousness as a form of egotism and you are not so likely to be victimised by it. Some of the hostility that you shrink from is probably imaginary.

People don’t object to differentness so much as they object to the attitude of superiority that often goes with it. So be as diff ...