THERE cannot be a complete replica of anybody, no matter how closely linked we are through blood, or any other kind of affiliation. Nature has wonderfully, through the Creator, created everything with its own uniqueness and authenticity. Everything living on earth is imbued with its own characteristics and features.
In the world of animals, no animal tries to behave like the other. Everyone, even in a family where characteristics are so closely linked, each is still distinctive. The cat family or felines of the genus ‘Panthera’ have its different classes of felines. Save for their common affiliation to being on the top of the food chain, as they are strictly carnivores and would only hunt and eat fresh hunts, their characteristics, style of feeding, mating, socialising etc are vastly different and very distinctive. They even vary in their sizes.
A lion, known as the King of Jungle, hardly takes on a prey on its own. It leaves the hunts for the lionesses and only helps out if there is a big prey, though he reserves the exclusive right to eat first before the rest of the pride does. Tiger are far larger cats, more aggressive, hardly social and are mostly solitary hunters. Within the cat families, also including cheetah (fastest animal), leopard, panther (black leopard) the cougar (mountain lion), lynx, jaguar etc each has its own distinctive characteristics.
I have observed that nature simply enjoys its uniqueness. And each class of living things simply revels in their uniqueness, with each flourishing in its difference. And that informed the adage that “no matter how tough the jungle is, a lion will never eat grass.” It is not in its constitution to do so. A lion will only feed on what eats grass, e.g, a gazelle, an antelope or a cape buffalo.
I once heard the story of an eagle that was hatched along with some chickens. The farmer saw the eagle’s egg abandoned and brought it home, added it to the chicken’s eggs that were being incubated by Mama Hen. Immediately it hatched, the eaglet was different from the others. The chicks wanted to scratch and peck for food, but the baby eagle wanted to stretch its wings. It saw that its wings was heavier, longer, fuller and trailed the ground. The width steadily expanded for flying. But it was forced to conform to its ‘mother’ and follow its ‘siblings’.
It was an eagle but because it was with the wrong crowd, it suffered an identity crisis. The eagle was being forced to peck the ground and scratch the dust when it should be hunting for fresh meat and soaring in the clouds. One day, it tested its wings and began to fly. As it did, it discovered it had a clear view of the ground. In the sky, it met its mates and discovered it was very different from the chicks with which it was birthed.
The similar fate of the eagle befalls mankind. Many, because of the wrong crowd, wrong relationships, wrong establishments, wrong orientation and influence of families and friends, truncate the true understanding of who they are. They are eagles mingling with chickens. No two tigers carry the same stripes. No two leopards carry the same spots or rosettes. Each is distinctive. No two individual carry the same finger prints. It is distinctive. So are our identities. We mostly struggle with identity crisis. That is why we do not acknowledge our worth because we do not realise we have got any. We try to be like others. That is why we keep companies to conform. Some companies we keep are simply destiny killers. And, sadly, we feel obligated by sentiments to keep the relationships, even though they hurt us and are overall quite detrimental to our destination in the long run.
Be not afraid when you lose relationships at any stage in your life, it may be that you do not need them to walk that phase with you. Trust me, there are some journeys you walk alone and it is very lonely. But it is a time of self-discovery, a time to understand your uniqueness and identity as a person. Don’t force friendships and don’t hang on to the dead woods in your life. Let them fall off so that new shoots can grow.
Identity crisis informs bad decisions, even in marital relationships. Many do not even understand their worth or value and so get involved with people who feed their insecurity. Others are afraid of standing out because they are clearly afraid to be different. For those, they prefer keeping to the norm and live safely within societal expectations because of fear of being ostracised, even though daily their inner personality struggles for freedom. That is why it is said that the grave is the richest place in the world. A place filled with un-birthed or still-birthed or aborted dream. A place frozen with great, but unlived dreams. A place choked with broken, shattered and strangled dreams. A place that embalms procrastinated and stifled dream, due to fear of the souls who once owned them.
There can never be an exact replica of you. I stand to be corrected if science can create something that is perfect.
Embrace your authenticity. Live your originality.
and then