My dear son,
You are only 6 ½ years old.
You came home from school yesterday with a shiner on your eye. You were playing chase and inadvertently
slammed your face into a classmate’s knee.
You were so sad. Sad, not because
you are physically hurting, though it did hurt.
You were sad because you knew
that today when you went to school, people would notice your eye. You would be different. You told me so. “Mom, can you please keep me home from school until
it’s gone? No one else has an eye like
this. I will be the only one!”
You are only in
Kindergarten and you already know what it is like to crave conformity.
Someday you will be in your mid 30’s, with a couple of kids,
and you will know the world as I know it.
Or sort of but similar to me you will understand things that you yet do
not comprehend. Because I am your mom, I
wish I could explain everything to you right up front and tell you where all
the keys are that will unlock your mind and allow you the freedom, the total
freedom, to be just who you are. But, I
can’t do that for you. I am your mom and
I am also a therapist and so I know a little bit about this process. And I also know that you must experience these problems.
You must go through the process of painstaking agony at being “different”
than the rest in order to get more comfortable with being uniquely you. I know that you have to go through it but I
still don’t like it. I want to tell you
(and I maybe did) that one day you will want
to be different, you may even choose to
be different.
You may have looked at me
like I had green hair.
You may have
said, “why would I ever want that.”
I may have felt my heart break just a little.
But I see you tonight go into the bathroom (because it has a
lock!) and make your 4 year old brother a birthday gift of drawings that you
neatly place inside a Tupperware and then wrap up with scotch tape and
paper. I see you gift him this artistic
creation. I see his joy. I then see him lock himself into the bathroom
and create for you the very same gift.
Complete with Tupperware sealing and scotch tape. He gifts you your “birthday” present even
though it isn’t your birthday. You thank
him, sort of (and I am pleased). You are
gone in an instant, on to different things.
He deflates ever so slightly because he can sense your gratitude is
apathetic. He wanted to be just like you.
But he can’t reinvent the wheel and your gift can never be exactly
recreated and to him, that was a small puncture to his ego. Yet he quickly moves on to wrapping up more
paper goodies for me, for our baby, for dad and he rebounds and recovers. He has no way of knowing that this was a
small training exercise that will prepare him for worse blows.
It’s not lost on me that you want to be like all your peers
and your brother wants to be like you and baby brother wants to be like both of
you. We like to be like other
people. Being different doesn’t feel right. It’s in our DNA. We are encoded with this program that says,
“copy everything everyone else does!” Don’t
believe me? Just look at your baby
brother intently and then make a show of sticking out your tongue and watch
what happens next!
So, I take note and I
don’t continue my agenda of trying to make you see the world through my
lens. But I still tell you that different is
good. Because it is. But I also tell you that conforming is
natural. Because it is. And, I bank on hope
that this is the right approach to take.
So you are off at school now with your black eye. Well, deep red today, purple tomorrow, black
the day after that. For the next few
days you are going to be different, son.
Classmates will ask you questions.
Peers will jest you. Bullies may
make fun of you. You may hurt. You may feel embarrassed. You may cry.
You may feel alone. You may feel
like you don’t have a friend in the world.
But I will be there. I know you
will rebound and when you do, you’ll be a little bit stronger for it. You’ll need that strength to deal with the
ongoing thwarts to your ego that will be essential ingredients to your developing
identity. So to that end the means have
justification. But, I also hope you will
keep this experience in mind so that when someone else is different, you
remember that it feels bad to be told
so. And all I can do is hope you pay it
forward, son.
Someday, please pay it
forward. That way your experience gets
to also have a humanistic purpose.
Love,
Mom
P.S. I will be
available all evening for extra hugs and lots of comfort.
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