The Importance of Difference

So often clients and students come to me expressing their wish to “be like everyone else.” Something is missing from their lives — a romantic relationship, an exciting social life, a sense of success and achievement. These are things we all want. Often what seems to be missing is a sense of connection, especially if the connection we seek raises our sense of esteem, not only our sense of self-esteem, but the esteem we receive from others.

But do we recognize the valuable qualities we already have? Are we able to appreciate and recognize our inherent distinctiveness?

I asked my students to write a brief paper about social and cultural norms as they define ideas of beauty or sexuality. A number of my students who identify as  bi-cultural wrote about their experiences within their own families and the difficulty of being fully accepted in either familial culture because of their mixed backgrounds.

One young woman’s experience was particularly striking.  She self-identified as half white and half Latina, and wrote about the way her family privileged white/Anglo beauty norms. She wrote about other bi-cultural members of her family who, had “colored-eyes” as opposed to hers. It took me a moment to realize that for my student “colored-eyes” were blue eyes. In her mind, her brown eyes were color–less, and therefore unattractive. Brown eyes, the eyes that “everyone” has, do not stand out, do not make a difference.

My students experience of her colorless brown eyes made me think about how important difference is to our sense of identity. We want to be able to see ourselves as distinctive individuals. We want, in some way, to be set apart. While the imposition of aesthetic and sexual norms marginalizes those who fall “outside” artificial cultural ideals of “normal,” falling within those norms can flatten our ideas about what can make us valuable. For my student, having brown eyes just made her like everybody else. Her brown eyes paled in comparison to those light blue eyes of her lighter Latina sisters.

We struggle with this tension that exists between community and individuality. So often we look outside ourselves for acknowledgement and validation, wanting to have what “they” have, to be like “they” are. And so often we “pale in comparison,” losing sight of the qualities that we have that are unique just by virtue of being our own. Is it possible to be “with” the majority but not have to be “like” them, to be a part of the whole and still remain somewhat apart from it?

My clients struggle with this question as well. Who defines success? What is a “good” relationship? What does it mean to be a “good” mother, a “good” husband, a “good” son? What will happen when someone really gets to know me? We struggle with getting lost in being like everyone else. We struggle with someone discovering that we’re not like everyone else. We live in an ongoing negotiation with difference….