Being a minority is an advantage.
If you’ve ever felt different from others, it will either make you or break you. Here, I want to explore how this can strengthen you, how it can help you differentiate.
The essence of the whole idea is that you are one of a kind. You are a unique person with unique experiences. There is no one else like you. You are one of a kind in the whole world, among all billions of people.
You are one of a kind.
The point is that the system you experience in your life tries to make you uniform, just like someone else. If you were in a school with 30 kids in your class, the system tried to make you one of those 30 people. And so it continued year after year, through the environment.
If you have siblings, cousins, etc., human nature leads to you becoming average among these people.
Unfortunately, many reach a point and do not realize how individual they are, how different they are, how they have something that sets them apart—something bursting to come out, but restrained because they are afraid. If you’re even 20 years old, you might not understand this yet. You may still be looking for answers that aren’t needed—they are already there, they have always been there, just obscured by dust and needing to be cleared away.
Spending a lot of time alone and experiencing various things alone is necessary to understand oneself because different experiences reveal different facets of you. For instance, when I first traveled alone, it helped me understand who I am, what I value, and what I do not value.
When you’re around people you grew up with, it’s easy to forget where your boundaries end and someone else’s begin. There’s a saying that if you want to know whether you should be in a relationship with someone, travel with them on a long journey. Journeys present obstacles and stress. People quickly reveal their temperaments, preferences, tolerance, and impatience.
To determine how much you have been shaped by this uniform system, ask yourself: do you feel like you are one of a kind, or are you like everyone else? Do you feel that you do not stand out? I’ve heard this many times. “What do I have to offer? I’m just like everyone else. I have nothing special to offer.”
I’ve heard this often, especially among young people who have not yet made their mark. It’s a kind of fear—“What about me? I’m just ordinary after all.” The answer is that you’re that way because you’ve told yourself so. There’s no other explanation.
And the question of how to identify this is very easy. Did you follow your own path, or did you follow the advice of your father, brother, society?
Were you able to trust yourself and justify your trust in yourself to gain confidence in your judgment, in your beliefs, in your faith, in your adequacy?
If you haven’t done that, you need to start with the very basics. It feels strange to even talk about this, but if you ask someone what their favorite dish is and they don’t know—if you can’t tell yourself “I love this particular thing”—then your personality has been smothered. And no one will un-smother it if you don’t do it yourself.
You must teach yourself to identify what is yours and what isn’t. Maybe orange juice is for you, maybe not. Both are fine. But you should definitely know—you can’t afford to be neutral about such things. You must allow yourself to express and experience this world in a way where you can clearly say: “This is mine, this is not mine.” Chasing women is not for me. Sports are not for me. But eating right and meditating—those are for me. Or maybe vice versa, maybe something else entirely. You need to understand your habits, understand how good and pleasant each activity or rest is for you. You might be one of those who loves mountains, or one who loves the ocean. Maybe you prefer the tropics, or maybe you want to live in the Norwegian fjords.
There is no correct answer for each of these. It is simply the expression of your soul.
Reaching such basic truths and asking yourself about them is essential. Otherwise, you might live your whole life without understanding what it was about. To determine whether you had the chance to experience similar things, you must understand whether you have experienced in life what others around you have not.
If you have always been in a certain circle where everything is homogenous and you were never able to experience strong contrasts, then you are fundamentally unable to understand what I’m talking about. Life is all about contrasts. You can’t appreciate warmth if you’ve never been cold—and the same the other way around. People living in tropical India do not understand what cold is. Their bodies, throughout their existence, have never known it.
I suggest you define for yourself what is within the scope of your experience, within the range of your adequacy and competence. You can clearly define this: this is black, this is white. And where you can say “I don’t know this, I haven’t tried this.”
Whether it’s about food, culture, women, clothing, or understanding some philosophy—you need to understand: this is my area of competence, and this isn’t. Clear understanding of competence gives you the possibility, first, to identify your strengths, and secondly, to understand where you can grow and how far you can go beyond that zone. Without definition, you will just wander and find no answers. Or if you do wander, you won’t understand why any answer is relevant or not.
Having defined all these boundaries, consider how far you are ready to go to reflect yourself, your personality, and your path. Without this commitment, without significant investment, it will be unclear where the end is, where it starts, and where you are going. If you are ready to go all the way to express your “I,” all doors will be open to you. You will not see barriers, because this is your expression.
This is simply your expression.
But if you fold at the first barrier, it simply means you did not choose the path of expression. It’s about defining one factor, one variable, one constant, and keeping everything else around it. If the benchmark is X, then the task is to have X multiplied by 1.1 every day or every month. The same applies here. If it’s about being ready to go, it’s simple: “I’m ready to go.” Define for yourself, from 0 to 100, how ready you are. And you go, according to your pace.
Having defined your “I” and starting to express it, you will realize that those around might not understand you. Being understood is very difficult in life. Very seldom is anyone fully understood. People might think they understand you, or pretend they understand you. In reality, deep understanding rarely exists because human communication is very limited. Even people living together for a long time may fundamentally not understand each other. They play roles, fulfill their duties according to these relationships. But there may not be true understanding. And that’s normal.
Why?
Because you were born alone, you will die alone. You live life alone. You are responsible for all your decisions in life, no matter how you look at it. The question is how quickly you understand this. You might understand it at 5 years old, at 10, at 20, at 30, at 50. Unfortunately, some people take a very long time to understand this. And then they wonder why their life is the way it is.
Continuing this thought: identifying yourself with those around you is a thankless task. This sort of locality—“We are from the south, we are from the north, our nation is known for this, I should be like this”—you shouldn’t be anything in particular. You are simply as you are. You can differ from those around you, and that’s normal. The point is whether you can be honest with yourself and clearly define: this is my circle, this is my strong side, I am competent in this, and I am not competent in that. And possibly I may never be—or maybe I will be.
By defining yes or no, with logical reasoning, we can understand where the next step is—whether it’s necessary to step outside this circle, build upon it, or go deeper.
All of these options can be correct, but only you can define them.
Because it’s your life and you are the one to live it.