u·nique
yo͞oˈnēk/
adjective
- 1.being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else.
It’s come to my attention that I’ve
gotten the meaning of unique wrong. I always thought unique meant I had to be
someone that everybody else was not. My personality had to be different, my
thought process had to be different and most importantly: my dreams, goals and
ambitions in life had to be completely different than everybody else.
The thing is, it was (and still is)
quite easy for me to do all those things effortlessly. I never had to try and be different; I just was! Ever since I was four years old,
I refused ballet lessons and wanted to play with dragon and dinosaur toys than
Barbie and some freak little kitchen thing that could conjure minuscule
cupcakes from nowhere.
Being unique is my calling; a sort
of prophetic word that’s defined my life since I was twelve.
But it took me these last ten
months to realize I had the right word defined wrong.
It all started with my sudden
passion for Korea (Check out my blog about that), where I couldn’t help
but to spew out my feels for it like it was coming out my ears. Everyone I met,
if at all interested, heard straight from me how much I love that country and
their people and, most of all, how I aspire to go there someday.
Little did I know that I would
“accidentally” influence over a handful of friends and family who would, too,
succumb to the feels of Korea just as I did. My one unique dream became ten
others’ unique dreams, which to me felt like tens of thousands. No longer was I
the only one that loved Korea unconditionally. No longer was I the only one
that knew I had a calling to go there and do something awesome. Now it felt like
everybody else did, too. And worst of all, it was my fault.
To be honest, which is my only
level of transparency anyway, I found myself getting bitter every time somebody
told me they loved Korea. “I love this song they have, and I want to go to
Seoul, too, and we should go together, and I think Asians are cute now, too!
Thank you for showing me this; I can’t believe I’ve been so ignorant of Korea
all my life. I just know I’m called there, too. Let’s definitely go there
together. If you go without me, I’ll be so jealous. You won’t get mad at me if I
go without you, would you?”
What.
HOW
COULD I LET THIS HAPPEN TO MY ONE AND ONLY UNIQUE DREAM? Was the thought
that started creeping up on me.
After some epic thought-battling
for several months knowing that I was being a poophead about this, I finally
decided to surround myself with some healthy-minded people that were unbiased
to my Korean feels, whom I explained to them my troubles.
It’s funny how ten months of
fighting such terrible pride and potential bitterness could be solved within
ten minutes of just talking to the
right people about it.
It came to my attention that having
so many friends and family on the same ship could (and will) propel me into my
own calling to Korea and that “even though all your destinations are the same,
your own goal is completely different” (as told by a Korean-like-minded
friend). No one person has the same exact destiny as the other--even the slightest difference in the most alike dream makes the outcome vastly distinct. I could go to Korea to teach, and so can another, but my goal would be to change their lives and not just their education.
So, as you see, after much processing, I've re-defined what unique really means:
u·nique
yo͞oˈnēk/
adjective
- 1.Although I am one of a kind and my dreams are specifically assigned by God to be my own and not another's, there are many alongside me (and I alongside them) to support one another into one common destination, through many different routes unlike anything else according to God's perfect design.
Of course this type of revelation will take my brain some time to re-route new thinking, but after discovering it, it'll definitely make my life finer than before. And yours, too, rest assured!
