| My dear friend Gary wrote this for me to encourage me to be myself, be brave and come out. It has been a long process but it's definitely hard, however, and rewarding. Thank you Gary for loving me for who I am... Tuesday, August 29, 2006
force of conformityHumans are community animals, meaning they find fulfillment in a community in which they are identified and recognized. I call this the Force of Conformity. While most people are able to find a niche that fits them and coexist through stages of life in harmony, some people are naturally more unique than others. This bell-shape distribution of personalities is inevitable since men are not homogeneous bots. Marginal human beings therefore face greater challenge in locating perspective niches; since they tend to differ from the mainstream more, the Force of Conformity exerted on them is greater. In other words, there exists lesser conformity force for those who are closer to the mainstream; for people who are greatly different however, they constantly confront with their (unpopular) identities and the awareness of being different. These people could be genius, psychopath, great thinkers or no-names. Some of them are loved for their uniqueness; some are hated. Some are in lifelong struggles with their identities trying to “fit in.” Usually the happiest of them all are those who don’t care about what others think—they don’t want to be like anyone else. Because everyone wants to be someone else, when they find someone who is happy just being oneself, everyone wants to be him. So if you want to be happy in life, be yourself. No matter how gross, how embarrassing or how uncool you think you are, the saddest thing you could do for your life is to live it like someone else’s but your own. If you are a marginal person, if you are someone who is a bit different like me, the Force of Conformity you have to fight against is rather large. When the Force of Conformity takes a successful toll at us we will exemplify a symptom I call “a Bad Case of Stripes.” A Bad Case of Stripes is a fable about a girl who developed stripes all over her body after denying her craving for lima beans in fear of being deemed uncool by her peers. I have suffered a bad case of stripes. In fact, I sometimes am a very big conformist. I could act differently in front of different people so I could please them, so I would not offend them. One reason that I am leaving Moody to work full-time is to be able to live the kind of life that I want to live—without the need to fake, to conform and to please. Not only I have been at odd with the Moody culture, I have been acting like someone else so much that I feel fake about myself. The type of people a conservative evangelical school breeds are mild intellectuals who are pastor materials. I am not pastor material. I don’t want to be a pastor and I am frightened by the idea of leading a flock of people on day-to-day basis. I have come to a self-realization I believe to be not far from the Gary that you know of—I am not a person of mildness and consistency. Words people use to describe me are dramatic, controversial, intensive, manipulative, impulsive, competitive, endearing, bold, confrontational, adventurous and courageous. It is impossible to live a life of controversy with the moral baggage of Moody, the cultural burden of conservative peers and the financial obligation with my parents. In other words, I cannot at one hand be the person that I really want to be and at the same time worrying about offending my associates, getting expelled by my school and disappointing my parents. I think it is very difficult to live in the controversy because the sheer Force of Conformity that seems to crush upon us. But if I am a man of controversy, if behind me are philosophies of controversial nature, I am doing justice to the God who created me, I am returning the very meaning of my existence, by being myself. Because I can only live my life once, and for twenty years I have lived for other people, to live another day under that Force of Conformity is to waste another day of my life in complete pointlessness. If I am going to accomplish something with my unique potential, I am going to use my unique potential the way it is. *** *** *** When I write this I think about you. I think about you because the so many ways that our struggles coincide. You too are struggling to live the life that you have deprived from living. For even more years of your life wasted away, you had made greater sacrifice for the Force of Conformity. You are not happy. You will never be happy as long as you choose to live your life in other people’s terms. We all have different answers for a problem, but at the end of the day no one else but you is going to live your life and deal your problem. You can go through your life with regrets at the end, on your deathbed, or you could wing it, muster enough courage to say to the world, “fuck it,” to confront this world with your reality. You will give up a lot when you fuck it, because in this world there are people who are either too bubbled-up or too full of themselves that they don’t like to hear you say “fuck it.” Your lukewarm friends will become polarized. They will become your enemies and your knights. Those unworthy friends will leave you, and I am happy for their departures, for their shallow existences shall serve little meaning anyway. You then will meet those who stand beside you. They will draw their swords and fight next to you. They will smile upon you and I am also happy for you, for you have found who are truly worthy. Why do we hold off our lives in the fear of the unknown? The unknown always unfolds itself when we confront it, and when it unfolds, our paths are far clearer. My friend, you have come a long way to hide from the unknown, to deprive yourself from living the life with the kind of dignity you deserve. When your happiness is stripped away because of the expectation from other people, that is not just a bad case of stripes, that is a gross injustice. Listen to me, other people don’t live your life. Other people aren’t gays and are never going to understand the pain and the shame you have been through. At the end of the day you can change your stars for it is your life to live and your choice to make. Life is too damn short to live for your parents or peer pressures. Life is too fucking tasteless, hopeless and meaningless to live for other people. It is the time to come out of shadow into the freedom that no one got a damn right to steal from you.
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. Here are some pictures...
