Platypuses, rain, pea a hoover and notebooks
Platypuses, rain, pea, a hoover and notebooks.?They have nothing in common. Paint them together and they will make you go mad, cut an ear and be declared a genius a thousand years after your death. Or even better, turn the pea into a necklace, tattoo a platypus where your left eyebrow should be, make some earrings out of the notebook’s spiral and swing a hoover’s hose above your head while running in the rain. Still not good enough? Too mainstream? Too much?
Aren’t we actually trying too hard NOT to become something that we end up becoming it? What if, instead of revolving around our own distinctiveness, we revolve around bits of other’s characteristics, without even noticing it?
Truth is, we do. Our personality has been easily building up since we learned how to communicate and follow other’s way of doing so; it goes way back to when our parents taught us how to talk, how to walk, how to put on clothes and so on. We have always been told to follow a certain pattern. We do try to break it during our lives, but all we do is actually increase the number of patterns that we follow: we combine them, modify them according to ourselves and then call it original. If we think about it, we might realize that the way we say ‘neither’ sounds very much like our grandma’s way of saying it. Or maybe the way we add ‘thing is’ at the beginning of an explanatory sentence is our teacher’s way of getting attention when giving an example.
So, question is: Do we ever break the pattern? No, we don’t. BUT, we do add something that is ours to it. Whether that something has been afflicted with someone or something else at some time, it matters less. But we, too, create patterns, even if they are rather subtle.?
Do not lose hope, ducklings! When you will dye your feathers in all the colours of the universe, you will finally be unique! Because when we do actually create something new, it might just end up in being our own rarity, that small aspect that defines us, even if it’s just an unsignificant earring. What if there is something that no one will claim as their own, something we will be remembered for? It might be that thing that our friends mockingly promise to write on our graves, such as “She could speak for one million hearts” or “He always smiled at everybody, even if they were just a stranger walking on the street; he got as many weird looks as smiles in return”. Those things, even if they’re ours, they’re everybody’s too.
Patterns are made to bring us together. That tiny thing you still do from a long-forgotten way of washing the dishes links you to thousands, maybe millions of people that wash the dishes like that as well. And it makes you unique, but somehow familiar.
Acest eseu este castigatorul mentiunii in cadrul?2012 Shakespeare School Essay Competition, grupa de varsta 15-19 ani.?Premiul a constat?intr-un MP 3 PLAYER de la Vitastal Consulting,?voucher de reducere in valoare de 300 RON pentru un curs de vara de limba engleza la Shakespeare School, carti de la Fischer International si de la Carturesti si materiale promotionale de la Vitastal Consulting.?O?felicitam pe Alexandra pentru ?eseul ei care s-a evidentiat din mii de eseuri trimise la concursul national de creatie in limba engleza organizat de Shakespeare School si ii uram mult succes in continuare!
