People say, the most important thing in the world is freedom, especially people that do not have it. But here, in the land of the free, we tend to give up most of that freedom to other people. Now I'm not talking about some of our laws being too prohibitive, because we actually do need laws to help govern ourselves. And if we did not have them, things would be absolute chaos.
No, what I am talking about is peer pressure due to public opinion. It is quite natural to want to be liked. What is not natural is allowing the fear of not being liked to make your decisions for you. But, we as a people, do it all the time.
We rush out to buy all the latest fashion trends and learn the lingo of our peer groups just so we can be accepted. We say it's because we like those things that we assimilate them into our life. The truth is we see that other people think they are cool and we want to be cool, so we do them.
Do you realize that every single time you do that, you are allowing someone else to control what you do? You are not making a decision for yourself. You are letting others decide for you. We do this without thinking about what we want or what we would like. We just clone what other people are doing.
I have a friend who is a rather extreme example of this. It's not what you think though. He doesn't follow all the latest trends and listen to the cool hip music. Nope. He's decided that he is all about originality and being different from the masses. Anything cool and popular, he automatically chooses the polar opposite of. He will actually go out of his way to avoid doing something that he has heard is popular.
So if the cool in thing was to wear a black shirt with thin white stripes, he would wear a white shirt with thin black stripes. That's cool and awesome right? He's being his own person and not letting anyone tell him how to dress!
Being a nonconformist does not make one original. It just changes the criterion used to let other people control you. One could actually prevent my friend from doing something that he would really enjoy doing, just by making it popular.
Also, different styles and trends fit each person's inner self in different ways. IF you want to be truly free, stop letting other people tell you what is cool and what is not. Sample a variety of different ways of being and find the one that works for you. As new ideas and styles come out, test them and incorporate the ones that are really part of who you are and leave the rest by the wayside.
The odds are that a lot of your choices will still fit within a specific niche, but the ways in which you are different from the epitome of that style will show your originality and ability for free thinking. You can be cool and unique at the same time.
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