The Original You

The Cre­ator has a way of mak­ing things the same but dif­fer­ent at the same time. Snow is just snow, but if you look closely, no two snowflakes are exactly alike — and it takes many thou­sands of them to make one small snow­ball. No two pine trees are exactly alike, though in a for­est they all look pretty much the same (our minds tend to gen­er­al­ize). The same is true with peo­ple — espe­cially when we are very young. It is when we are tod­dlers that we are our most unique.

By kinder­garten we have already begun to imi­tate each other. Left unchecked, our truly orig­i­nal lives get traded in for enough con­for­mity to think what every­one else thinks and have mostly what they have. Trad­ing orig­i­nal­ity for secu­rity is our most prac­ticed self-betrayal.

Jesus pointed us back to being more like small chil­dren: curi­ous, won­der­ing, trust­ing, con­tent, and for­ever in a unique new world. Adults let the frowns of other adults limit their orig­i­nal­ity. Eye­brows go up, faces go down. We are shamed into conformity.

Every so often, go back to being you. Find the things you liked as a child. Have the courage to ignore the social pres­sures to con­form. Bet­ter yet, be so focused on the novel com­bi­na­tion of your genet­ics and the unique cir­cum­stances of your life that you sim­ply do not notice the trends around you.

Jesus encour­aged peo­ple to “enter through the nar­row way.” True spir­i­tu­al­ity is not the result of some assem­bly line process. It may express itself in some pre­scribed pat­terns (bap­tism for exam­ple) but it is the jour­ney of the indi­vid­ual to God. We do not get there by soci­o­log­i­cal categories.

Have the courage to be the orig­i­nal (snow)flake you are — and stop apol­o­giz­ing for it.