Sameness Seen, Sameness Does: Breaking the Mold into Your Bust

Sameness in and of itself might be a sin. Don't stop reading. Stay with me. Here is what I mean. We spend a lot of time (arguably too much) copycatting and imitating that we willfully neglect doing and being something different and choose instead to be the same as...

Now, imitation is not always diabolical. It can be inspirational and transferable in its own right. One scientific breakthrough or benchmark might produce results that may be applicable elsewhere. Resonating content, like the infamous Hofmeister kink and reality talent competitions, may appeal to, influence, and scale to wider audiences and applications. But, in personality, sameness has no place, even among family, fiends, and mentor-mentee. There are traits that are worthy of imitation:

• kindness,

• patience,

• faithfulness,

• vulnerability.

You can share and emulate traits, but how you embody them should be uniquely you. And that is to be valued and dare I say- celebrated.

But, what occurs when we want to be just like ____ _______ (fill in the blank) you admire? Or, what happens when we are jealous of the way __ ___  does ______? Worse, what happens when you do not appreciate someone's unique gifting and display of who the person is? How he's made? Does she show up in life differently? How might we show up? Measure up?

Measuring Up Bust (Generated with AI)

Dr. Seuss famously said, "why fit in when you were born to stand out?" The longer you live, the more comfortable you become with yourself and better you know others when you observe yourself and your relationships. You live and breathe what makes you different and understand what makes you and others distinct. Patterns cannot help but emerge. Are we really honoring others well or are we only honoring the parts we are most comfortable with? I'd encourage us to think about how we are processing them and affirming them in everyday life- and ask how?

I previously wrote on the core problem of the sea of sameness; it artificially limits the differences we naturally see. What would it look like for us to take inventory of our differences and own those outright? I'll take it one step forward. What would it look like to celebrate individuals apart from milestones- you know apart from:

• the glitz and glam of awards,

• milestone workiversaries,

• birthdays; and of course my least favorite-

• retirements and funerals

You know, all the special stuff...And even then in these rites of passage, those moments are so saturated- how can you even process all that is being said near-simultaneously? When is the last time you did this? Is this part of your regular rhythm? Why not?

Depending on your cultural and ethnic background, you may be more preconditioned and predispositioned to celebrate. I love how many of my Ethiopian and Indian friends can celebrate a wedding. That being said, personal celebration does not happen on this frequency and scale apart from birthdays in American culture. Why do we wait for particular, concentrated moments when we have a lifetime to celebrate? I believe our neighborhoods and communities would be better if we had a more principled discipline of celebration.

I think we would all benefit from bringing more thought and intention to our interpersonal interactions. More recently, I have been using Google Gemini to help me in this area. In thought, it dawned on me that while I love to get work done (and focus plenty of attention here systematically, robotically, efficiently optimizing and operationalizing), I do not think about intentionally productionizing and deploying my personal giftings to the same extent. Are some of yours more like an after thought? Criminal, right? It shouldn't be that way. I believe it's time for us to be more focused on embodying and incarnating our gifting and affirming the gifting of others.

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