The Power of Being Different
My entire life I’ve been a contrarian. When everyone in my social circle enrolled in Spanish classes, I took French classes, and took Mandarin Chinese when I had the chance in high school. Around the age of eight I decided I wanted to “be liked for my mind and not my body” (what the heck was I even talking about at that age??) and only wore sweatpants for the next four years to discourage anyone from evaluating me for my looks. I was a reader in a family that strongly encouraged educating myself but didn’t quite get how I could read anything, anywhere, for hours on end.
In high school I hung out with three distinct sets of friends that never overlapped. I spent most of my day with the privileged “smart kids” as I was part of the inaugural class of International Baccalaureate Organization scholars at my high school (and ironically the middle/upper middle class families gave their kids a better education at the local high school than the private schools in the area). I spent recess and some of my free time with the oddballs, who were an eclectic bunch of anime watching, artsy, and slightly emo students that somehow all lived near each other (well except me of course). And finally I had a sliiiight connection with some of the cool Black kids because one of my best friends was a blue-eyed blonde-haired White girl who was part of the “in crowd” and yet still thought I was interesting enough to hang out with too. And yet, almost none of the people in my friend circles knew where I lived, almost never visited my house, and only saw that one slice of me.
Needless to say, I was a loner for a good portion of my adolescence, and a bit of a contradiction. I hated all things girly but had a fairly curvy body that only looked good in more feminine things. I attended schools with low graduation rates but excelled in AP and IB classes. My family was “blessed” (meaning while we were objectively poor we were always thankful for our blessings) and I was raised in a single parent household yet I got into programs that were ostensibly beyond my reach. Each of these contradictions meant that sometimes the folks around me didn’t quite know how to engage with me. I was perpetually different; never fitting in with people’s expectations regarding who I am and who I should be. As you can imagine, beliefs of me being different became exacerbated as I came out as queer in my early twenties.
Identifying as queer was a breakthrough for me understanding the power of being different. While I’ve always experienced feeling different than my peers, I didn’t always know what to do with that feeling outside of standing in that truth. But being queer was radical for my thinking because part of the beauty of being queer is that all of the gender categories that people assume are in sync (sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, etc) simply aren’t. Instead, I got to *choose* how I wanted to be. Did I want to be both the person that took care of the finances (a more masculine role) as well as the person who did most of the cleaning in the house (a more feminine role)? Instead of being defined by what others wanted for me, being queer reminded me that I am the arbiter of my own destiny and that to be happy I didn’t need to follow by other people’s rules. In fact, I could take what worked for me and leave the rest. That's how the LOT Planner was born. None of the planners out there worked for me and I made one of myself instead of trying to continuously make things that worked for other people work for me.
All of the things I’ve dealt with since I was eight years old came to a head. I didn’t have to choose to be Black or be smart; I could simply be both. I didn’t have to choose identifying with a working class background and the privilege afforded me as a graduate of Harvard University as both were true of me and my experiences. And when I stopped trying to make the narratives that other people placed on me fit, people were forced to engage with Kiera the individual and not Kiera the stereotype, one way or another. Furthermore, I found other people who were different in the same way that I was. By living in my truth I found community. I was so much happier focusing on the paths that made me feel happy and whole instead of worrying that being different meant there was something wrong with me. (There is some psychological research on seeing people not as members of groups but as individuals as an effective way to combat prejudice and stereotypes, which to me is the cherry on top of the cake.)
People often like moving to new spaces because they feel it’s a chance to start over and redefine who they want to be. They use new chapters in their lives (e.g. a new job or a new school) as a way to press the reset button. The only problem with this way of thinking is that you shouldn’t have to wait a year to redefine who you want to be. Thinking this way gives the people around you too much power to define who you are, so much so that in order to be anything different you need to surround yourself with people who have no prior experience with you! Instead, do that self-work that seems to come naturally to some during transition periods and start being the person that you want to be now. Being different is an opportunity for self-growth, a chance to ask yourself what aspects of the “norm” are relevant for you and your path and which ones don’t serve you. You will be surprised at how many people are different in the same ways you are, making your differences no longer that different.
P.S. Yes, that’s me in the photo!
P.P.S If you’d like to see me talk about this topic to my alma mater (and be pretty goofy), watch this youtube video!
