Like taking all the animals at a zoo and trying to make them resemble each other, there is enormous idiocy in our relentless pursuit of being alike. We’ve been given the gift of being an original, and yet we succumb to cultural pressure to be the same. The greatest contributor to divorcing our originality is the tendency to compare ourselves to others.
I spent years trying to hide the fact I am overweight. It’s an emotional issue that I am still working to release. Recently, I began to think, “I’m a large women, period. My size is not who I am. It isn’t important, and what other people think just isn’t my business.” For the first time in too many years, I stopped obsessing about my looks, and relaxed in being me.
One can go nuts trying to emulate the people on TV or in the theater. With their just-this-side-of-concentration-camp-bodies, they model so much attention on what we look like—and a beautiful body does not a beautiful person make!
If someone tells me they want to be just like me I say, “The gold you see in me exists in you or you would not recognize it. Value your own version of my gold, and live it proudly! “I’d like to be able to handle criticism like Oprah does,” is admiring a choice she makes without trying to be her.
Don’t compare the sun to the moon. Each one shines in their own way at their own time.
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Scott A. McDaniel photo
