“How far you can run away thinking; you look dumb, and you are not enough?”
That question still finds me, even now, in every hour I spend away from doing something. It was hard to face back then. It’s not much easier today.
I trace it back, sometimes, to childhood. The same feeling, showing up in a new shirt each time. Should I be doing this. If I don’t, what does that make me? I still catch myself mid-thought, asking it.
It started young. I was bad at writing. Bad at memorizing. I wanted to be better than everyone around me, badly.
One thing pulled me in anyway. Speaking a foreign language. English, specifically.
I didn’t know where to start. I just knew I wanted to be different, in at least one way, one day. I wanted to make it mine, even by looking dumb. or being called an anomaly. At the same time, i was scared too, of failing loud enough for everyone to notice.
Back then, I was doing something nobody in my circle bothered with, and I felt small for it. Small, but stubborn enough to keep reading whatever might sharpen my speaking and pronunciation. I took whatever good I could find and tried not to let the criticism cut too deep inside me. I started trying different accents, along with one or two classmates.
Everyone else called me the dumbest kid in the room.
Why? I wasn’t chasing girls. Weren’t cracking jokes at anyone’s expense. Wasn’t flattering teachers to stay in their good books. I was the one standing up to ask for a lesson revision. I was always first in line for the whole class’s punishment.
I made it through primary school, anyway, carrying that nimble love for writing obvious English with me. Then I met a humble high school teacher who helped me practice, in my ways.
I ended up being the highest-scoring student in the whole town. Breaking a fifty-year record, studying the entire curriculum in English while I did it. Nobody believed it, not even my parents.
After years of humiliation, and a struggle I still feel in my chest sometimes, the time I spent on this love for language finally caught up with me. My standing in the neighborhood flipped, almost overnight.
The pattern started and kept me through it. I finished my master’s in advanced tech, on scholarship. Started working international gigs. Kept practicing my speaking so often that, somewhere along the way, on a trip through Asian countries, strangers began stopping me on ‘you have such a good accent, how did you learn?’
You don’t look European nor like other Asians. But you speak like you carry a British accent. One of the finest compliments I ever taken. Hearing it, over and over, made one thing clear, none of it was possible without getting comfortable in looking foolish, and a little unhinged, along the way.
The realization is a simple one, even now. Be unlike the room you are in. Pave your own path and make it yours. You can regulate your own mind but can’t do a thing to help else’s.
It’s their decision and not in your hands at all.
Every person who was the cheerleaders of my dumbness couldn’t made past high school.
When I sit with myself now, and think about what a person is actually worth, I keep landing in the same place. Living small when you were built for more, is like taking pennies when you were owed millions.
Be an extra ordinary by doing ordinary things more often than people do.
Leave a Reply