“Dinner is ready!” You hear your mother shout from the kitchen. In a single, unconsciously memorized movement, you jump from your bed, turn off the TV, open the door and, leaving your bedroom behind, start walking hesitantly towards the dining room.
A second later, your mother shouts again: “Hurry up!” But you just keep walking. Your legs are too shaky to run.
It takes some time – why is everything passing so slowly? Your mother’s now screaming and no one can clearly distinguish her words, but you can tell she’s happy. This only makes things harder.
At some point, you sit at the table. The chair is too big, so you swing your feet back and forth. The food is steamy and looks delicious. Your father is silent. Your mother is proud. Your brother looks like he’s got some secrets he doesn’t want to share.
Your father gives the order: let’s pray.
A flow of words long-crammed into your head goes by, but for some reason your mind is empty. Your heart is pounding under your chest. The prayer is over. Everyone gets to the dishes, having a little from everything. You don’t move. It’s better to just let it all out right now, you think. I’ll just puke the words. It’ll be easier.
You open your mouth but nothing goes out. The next ten minutes are an eternity.
It’s only when your mother notices the overwhelming silence enveloping the table, as if it knew it all too well, and puts the blame on your mood, asking: “Why are you so quiet?”, and you take a deep breath, feeling the bloodstream under your veins strangely vivid, experiencing time as if it didn’t matter, getting desperate because the floor is too distant from you, it’s only then that an extraneous force takes upon your body and, finally, you think, it makes you mutter, timidly but decisively:
“I am different.”
Your father frowns. Your mother screams. Your brother laughs. They ask you to explain it better and, too late, right? You do it. Things get even worse.
After the commotion, though, you feel strangely liberated. Uneasy, but liberated. Exposed, but liberated.
You have just entered the Uncomfortable Zone.
Many of us have been through the scene describe above – or at least through a version of it. Usually, we are teens or young adults who seem to do nothing but rebel. But, sometimes, we wait as long as until adulthood to stick to our beliefs. Sometimes we never do that. One can only understand why: it’s scary and expository; it feels wrong and uncomfortable. But always – and I mean, always –, it ends up leaving with an amazing feeling of liberation and empowerment on us. Why? Because standing up against seemingly stronger forces because they disagree with your beliefs is the shortest path to self-fulfillment. No matter how scary it looks, no matter how wrong it feels, it’s always better to embrace yourself and encourage others to do the same.
Once you saw your parents like gods. Later you realized that they were humans. Just like you.
These words were written to tell you a secret: the same is true for society.
No matter how righteous and entitled an individual may seem, he doesn’t own any absolute truth. Everything is debatable and subjective to different perspectives. If you have a different opinion from the whole world, it means less that you’re wrong and the rest of the world is right and more that you have your own, unique perspective. With tolerance among people, everyone can have theirs too.
Like you once stood up to your parents to defend who you were, live the rest of your life standing up to society and saying: “This is who I am.”
No one is going to do that for you.