Before you follow the crowd...

Where am i going???

So today, as I was heading to work, I hitched a ride with my dad because my car has got a life of its own these days... it has mood swings...lol Anyway so my dad was more than happy to give me a lift and as we indulged in some heated conversations along with mum, my mum was getting impatient with the traffic so she told my dad to take a different route because most taxis were using that route; and this is what my dad had to say "Do you know where they are going or why they are taking that route? Before you follow the crowd, know your destination". As you can imagine my mum was surprised by this response, as she kept quiet and decided to let my dad figure his way out to get us to our destinations,  in this case work stations.
      This tickled my mind, as i asked myself If we all ever think about where we are going? Or why we are going that way and not the other? Most of us if not all, have fallen culprit prey to following the crowd at a certain point in our lives. It is human nature to always strive to fit in, and so we compromise our beliefs, integrity, needs and opinions just because we want to belong "blend " in; without much thought as to where we would like to end up, let alone why we want to end up there.....
Ever thought that maybe you were born to stand out? When I look at my life growing up, my mum was always trying to get me to be like other girls, it was always "why don't you just play with dolls and play tea party instead of climbing trees,  riding a bicycle and playing soccer? Be normal for once" she would say every time i came home with a scar from falling off my bike or falling of a tree. I can't remember how many times I was beaten for climbing up the fence to play with the boys next door instead of playing with my sisters, or how many times I was beaten for climbing the mango tree in the neighbor's yard. My dad always scolded me for not speaking as ladies speak he often jokes that am a boy in a female body, never mind that   3/4 pf my friends are guys and they always wonder why I am more comfortable staying with guys than the girls. I don't really have an explanation for why I act the way I do, why I prefer to hang with Guys than with girls, why I preferred playing soccer, than tea party with barbie or why i flushed my first barbie doll down the toilet and preferred my brother's brick game, except for the simple reason that I am just more comfortable being so. I can however say that I think I was born to stand out. I like to joke to my friends saying, "Am a trend setter, I don't follow the crowd, the crowd follows me".
 I know people who cant stand me because my personality is too strong, I don't dress like every one dresses, because i dress my feelings, my personality. When I first started working in NWSC, the HR had an issue with my choice of clothes, not because they were indecent  but because they didn't fit her "corporate Image". Whatever that meant. But now, she has warmed up to me and my "diva" tendencies as she calls them, actually a few ladies are beginning to dare a bit more with their dressing coming out of their "corporate" attires. So what if I wear a green skirt and a yellow shirt? I like color, it makes me happy, and I think it suits me well. I do what pleases me because at the end of the day I can only be me.
But I haven't always been like this, I once dated a guy who had issues with my wearing short dresses, or having bright nail polish saying people would't respect me if I kept being that way. And for a while I guess I believed him because I changed my image to suit his needs. Then People started to ask me what was wrong, as I was no longer looking my happy self. I had replaced me with someone else's standard, and it took a toll on me as I became more irritable and with time I actually felt depressed with no apparent reason, and that's the worst thing that could happen to anyone. To be unhappy and not understand why. Luckily for me, the relationship outlived its course and came to an end, not to insinuate anything but I have never felt so liberated as i tried to find myself again. Later I realized I had been miserable from too much pretending to be something am not so I could be more accepted. I wasn't being my self, I was too busy trying to fit in when I was born to stand out. I had been fighting myself instead of embracing myself and in the process becoming my own enemy.
If your destination is to be great, don't follow the crowd to mediocrity... Know yourself, know what you want, know where you want to go and embark on that journey, don't stop for anyone or anything except for yourself. Imagine if Bill gates had listened to the people who thought he should get a college degree to succeed and blend of if Mark Zuckerberg hadn't dropped out of Harvard to invent Facebook just because society thinks a college degree is the right thing to do, where would social networking be and where would the ICT revolution spearheaded by Microsoft be? This whole ICT revolution would still be a myth. And so my dears;
Don't be afraid to stand out, don't do something just because everyone is doing it, you are not everyone, Know yourself, know where you want to go and why you want to go there, lastly know your destination... Before you follow the crowd!!!
Xo Xo
Tanya