Standard. noun. A level of quality.

Eg:  Standard equipment. Standard currency. Standardized tests. Personal standards. Standardized Society.

Standards are a part of life. People set standards and expectations for their own behavior and the behaviors of those closest to them, but somewhere along the way, someone decided to create standards for everyone. These became the expectations for every person in society and unfortunately, we have grown to internalize these standards. We look to them for every decision in our lives. We fear being judged or disliked by those around us, so we follow these rules to the letter. Oftentimes, these standards may go against our personal beliefs, but we have a powerful innate desire to be liked. If you fail your personal standards, you look to the people around you. But if you fail the standards of others, you fall into a dark pit of hopelessness and despair.

How do others see you?

Smart. Creative. Loves Life. Always Positive.

How do you view yourself?

Lost. Broken. Trash. Scared. Lazy. Stupid. Temperamental.

How do you want to be viewed?

Happy. Care-free. Pretty. Special

How do you feel?

Empty.

In a recent in-class activity, we worked on defining our personal identity. After moving around so many times, meeting so many new people, and 16 years of life, you’d think that I would have a pretty solid sense of identity. People think they see me, and they have chosen to describe me one way. They have described me as smart, happy, loving, and creative. I was in tears in the middle of this assignment because I have no idea who I am. I’ve spent so many years hiding who I thought I was and being who I thought I should be, and now I don’t know who I am. I’ve spent almost half my life pretending to be someone else. I changed who I was to become someone that would be liked by those around me. It’s gotten to the point where I am deathly afraid of not being liked. I am terrified of being judged and shamed for the tiniest pieces of my life. I feel so empty, but everyone else sees someone full of life and happiness. That’s the problem with a standardized society. We repress who we are and what we really want in order to be liked by a cookie-cutter society. Regardless of how the standards affect our personal beliefs, we follow them due to an innate desire to be liked. We compromise our best qualities in order to be like everyone else. We fall into a robotic routine to please the masses, ignoring the cries of our inner-selves, trying to get out. We push away those who are different, we push away those we aren’t like us, and we push away those who don’t do what we like. In the end, we bury ourselves and others in the effort of please the judgmental crowd.

Recently, there have been many trailers for the upcoming movie, The Greatest Showman. Basically, it’s about a man named P.T.Barnum who founded showbusiness and became a visionary who rose from nothing to become a worldwide sensation. He gathers together a band of misfits and outcasts and put them on display for the world to see. He knows that people will be hesitant at first because he is defying the standards of the day, but he stands by his words: “No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else” (The Greatest Showman). Another memorable moment is when Anne Wheeler (the acrobat) is talking to Phillip Carlyle (another member brought on by Barnum). Phillip says he doesn’t have an act, and Anne responds with a smile, saying, “Everybody’s got an act” (The Greatest Showman). While this quote is most likely talking merely about acts in the circus, it could also be an implication upon the facades of the people. Everyone puts on a brave face when they are scared. Everyone act happy when they are miserable. Everyone pretends to be something they are not in order to please those around them. These misfits stand out more than anyone else just for their looks, but everyone hides their stand-out qualities in order to be liked. Shining above all the other inspiring moments of The Greatest Showman is the song, This is Me. Sung by Keala Settle, This is Me talks about the shame everyone has, and the strength we need to be ourselves. The video below is the lyric video for This is Me. I considered leaving the lyrics below, but I believe it’s important for you to hear this song.

It is hard to be yourself when everyone tells you that you are worthless. It is hard to stay strong when you’ve been pretending for so long. But when we pretend to be someone else, it seems we trade away our hearts and souls for computer chips and robotic wiring. We transform into a mindless machine, and we lose our spark. The fire inside of us is what helps us know we are alive. We must let the fire burn, and stay true to our ourselves, no matter what everyone else says.

In the Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. Hooper is a prime example of staying true to yourself. He is a minister in a small, puritan community, who believe in strict rules and extremely high standards. One Sunday morning, he shows up with a piece of black crape covering his face, in the form of a veil. The town is clearly appalled, and they feel as though Mr. Hooper can see all of their secret sins. The members of the community shun him in a very obvious fashion: they ignore him, reject him, and force him into solitude. Resilient in his mission, Mr. Hooper never takes off the veil, even on his deathbed. When the Reverend Mr. Clark demands Mr. Hooper to take off his veil, Mr. Hoope refuses. He tells those around him not to fear himself, but to fear those around them. “Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?” (Hawthorne 246). Mr. Hooper knows that the veil made him an outcast. It made him different in a community that valued unity. It made him stand out at a time when those who stood out were made to be villains. He was rejected by the society because of a tiny piece of black material, because of one small tiny change made to his appearance. He did something that no one else liked, and he lived alone for the rest of his life because of it. He refused to conform, refused to be like the crowd, and he died with no one by his side because of it.

In a happier story, Henry David Thoreau addresses conformity in the world in Walden. Walden is a journal written about Thoreau’s time in a cabin by Walden Pond. Thoreau notices that his feet made a path from his cabin to his water supply in less than a week. He makes the guess that the same thing could be said about the unseen paths of the world. “It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route and make a beaten track for ourselves…How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity” (Thoreau 213). Thoreau wanted to go Walden pond to live deliberately. He wanted to live apart from the busy distractions of life, and the bothersome rules of society. He wanted to live differently, yet he found a pattern evolving in less than a week. Thoreau noted how we live by the rules of society subconsciously, and that after enough time we don’t even realize how robotically we start living. Once we remove ourselves from society, we begin to discover the roots of society deep in our minds. We find a freedom in our solitude. We find freedom away from the rules of an uncaring society. Once we find the freedom, we never want to let go.

Freedom is easier as a concept than an idea in practice. We try to be free in a busy life with a harsh society, and freedom is better imagined than achieved. Mr. John Keating, of Welton Academy, says that “only in their dreams can men be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be” (Dead Poets Society). In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating teaches English in a very non-traditional format, and he teaches the boys to become free thinkers in their own right. He tries to give them as much freedom as possible, and the teachers look down on Mr. Keating for doing so. Having lived in a society that badgers those who stand out, Mr. Keating knows that freedom is a concept best used in the dreams and imaginations of children because it just doesn’t work in practice. In a modern society, freedom is a luxury that no one has the time for. Freedom requires open minds, clean slates, and open arms. None of which can be held in a modern society that holds everyone to a general, vague, two-faced society. We live in a world preaching freedom while closing the outsiders into boxes. Freedom belongs in dreams because that is the only place freedom can work in a society of robots.

Individuality. noun.

The quality or character of a particular person that distinguishes them from others of the same kind, especially when strongly marked.

Your individuality is the best thing about you. It is special, and it makes you be you. You cannot be yourself if you are pretending to be something you are not. I pretended for 5 years, and now I’ve dug myself into a hole I might not ever escape from. But I am done hiding. I am done pretending to be something I’m not to please people that don’t matter. Stay true to yourself. In a society that drags us down, the only way to fight back is to shine brightly. Be who you are, and don’t take any negativity from anyone. Brush it off, and get back up. Don’t let the robotic, standardized society drag you down with all of the rules, regulations, and bullet points. Stand tall, shine brightly, and never back down.