Probably just conformed. I think most people have the potential to be unique but most choose to do what society tells us.
There are of course people that were just born to be robots or cogs in the machine.
so how do you tell the difference? are those in the first group miserable while those in the latter are content?
until very recently, i believed that everyone thought like me deep down. but now i'm not so sure. i want to believe that everyone has just been crushed into this mold by society, but sometimes it's hard to see that they didn't choose it.
i was homeschooled my entire life in a rural area, so i was VERY socially stunted when i started college. all through college, i tried to adapt and fit in. and i was successful. unfortunately, i tend to prioritize the needs and wants of others above my own, so i buried myself under the weight of everyone else's personalities. i never experienced social disconnect because i would mould myself to meet people where they were at.
the summer before my senior year, i spent a lot of time with myself. living in a city where i knew no one. biking to work. doing things that i wanted to do. tuning into my inner heart beat.
towards the end of the summer, some friends came to visit me. we went out for dinner and i cried myself to sleep that night because i realized i had changed. it was like looking into the mirror and seeing a different face. i detested the shallowness of their gossip and felt, for the first time since entering college,
very out of place. i had discovered myself and i was either going to have to grow distant from people that i loved or force myself into their mold again.
the next semester, i got ill and i guess that was my body forcing me to isolate, avoiding the inevitable indecision. so i accidentally distanced myself from some people, but also got closer to others. now i feel more like myself, but am i just conforming to a different social norm or is it really me?
“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
that is the struggle of my life. i lived in an anarchist community for a bit last summer, and i feel that i really got a sense of who i was apart from societal pressures. sometimes i just think i was subject to
different societal pressures, but the community valued independence so highly that i didn't feel pressured to be anything. it felt very much like being in solitude amongst a crowd.
i guess i've been hearing rumors that i wasn't normal my whole life, but i only chose to listen to that voice when i felt a sense of belonging in a community of
really strange people.