On Being Yourself

When my sister was applying to colleges, my parents bought this book for her called “100 Successful College Application Essays” which, as its title suggests, is a compilation of college app essays that helped their authors gain admission to top schools. To be honest, I was a little bit annoyed at the gesture…it seemed as if they were trying to write our college essays for her, or as if they believed there existed a “template” for a successful essay that could be mindlessly followed to produce another. However, when my sister bequeathed it upon me last year, I was surprised to find that it was just the opposite. I’ve only read a few of the essays, but it’s obvious that each of the essays is in the collection because it doesn’t follow a template. The authors use creative approaches – hand-drawn comics, unorthodox structure, made-up words, even made-up narratives – in defining themselves; each essay is able to portray a unique set of life experiences that shaped the author into a distinctive individual.

In “My Childhood on the Continent of Africa,” David Sedaris describes the ironic feeling of jealousy for his partner Hugh’s emotionally burdensome childhood. He mocks himself for wanting a childhood of “adventure,” complete with political turbulence and morbid field trips, while his own childhood was spent in the peace and comfort of middle-class suburban America.

As ridiculous as Sedaris’s emotions are, I found them pretty relatable. As I read the successful college application essays, I sat back and wondered what was unique about my experiences. Having grown up in some of the best possible conditions available in the world, I am ashamed to say that I had a nagging feeling of incompleteness in the idea that I lacked a cause that I wanted to die for, or that I had never overcome some life-threatening setback. And, like Sedaris, I realized that these feelings were evidence of the extreme state of my privileged irrationality.

In our culture, individuality and “uniqueness” in character are highly-valued commodities. From a young age, we are repeatedly told, “Don’t be afraid to be different,” “You are special,” and (my favorite) “Be yourself.” While these statements do have value, as they oppose the kind of conformity that impedes individual thought and spirit and the advancement of society, they are banal and ineffective in actually helping people find their identities. They promote the idea that to be different from others is to be great, which is not always the case. It’s this idea that perpetuates Sedaris’s jealousy of Hugh’s exotic childhood and fuels my own desires to be “myself,” whatever that means. We want to not only be different from others, but to be naturally so – we crave a sort of intrinsic uniqueness that no one else can acquire.