Same same but different

After spending more than 3o years in this cookie-cutter of a city, being different/unique is not exactly a trait that receives a warm welcome.

Much less if it's uniquely poor academic performance. Meritocracy, that's the edict decreed unforgivingly by the founding patriarch of this wannabe-democracy. Be excellent in school, all other strengths are secondary, if any important at all. Those who are unfortunately less adept to scoring the exams are slowly & ruthlessly segregated to the bottom of the stockpile - where the scum belong. The only way for these people to escape their fate is escape - to another country, or so it seems. I suppose this is why many of my friends are either considering or have already chosen to migrate, KT is with them on this, hands & all other limbs raised in agreement.

As I mull over taking up studying again, in pursuit of a very different profession, I can already hear questions & doubtful comments that essentially say I would be wasting my time, even if it means I have discovered a calling that my heart & soul might finally be at peace with.

Everyone is made unique, that's how God made us, I believe. But we have been nurtured to desire a group identity, that can only be by sharing similarities with other members of the group. So we get caught, in this rift between recognizing & growing our uniqueness yet fearing expulsion from the herd. We want to know & be who we are at heart, be honest with our true selves. To find someone who see us that way, who shares & appreciates our common quirks and respects those quirks we have but they don't.