Our Country prides itself on its individualism. It is true that it has been set up with personal liberties and justice for all. Now whether we have the amount of liberties that we think we have, and whether we have justice for all is definitely up for debate.

            What I want to address is a different matter all together, but does affect ourselves as US citizens, and that is whether we as individuals are utilizing our individualism fully in our lives or have we become hamsters that go around on the hamster wheel every day doing the same thing as others or the same thing as we did the day before?

            As long as we do not feel that it is important to live as true individuals in our daily life, then personal liberties can slowly slip away without even being noticed, and we become to sluggish to stand up for ourselves or fight for what we believe.

            Now some do not believe that our personal behavior has anything to do with politics or making a difference, but it does it some interesting ways. You may ask, how is that? Well, it seems that when someone thinks really outside the box or does behavior that is not “ normal”, then others put them in unpleasant categories or tries to unconsciously pressure them into behaving and thinking like others.

I will share a few of my stories in being an individual, and I hope that you can reflect on your own to see that this does happen. When we know that it happens then we can stay even stronger in our real individuality even if others cannot understand it. To me that is true liberty. To be a prisoner of categories, and to behave accordingly does not seem free at all. And I am not talking about antisocial behavior; I am talking about behaving from your personal uniqueness.

One day this past summer I went to one of the music events downtown. There were at least a couple hundred people they’re listening to the music. Only one person was dancing, and they definitely did not care. I love to dance so I started dancing too, and some friends came up around me, and as we started talking, they made comment as to whether I was drunk or not, because I looked like I was having a really good time.

I don’t drink, and said so, they seemed confused as to my behavior. If I had not been working on not getting peer pressured my whole life, that would have definitely quieted me down, and had me standing on the sidelines listening the same way the other two hundred people were doing. I know that not everyone likes to dance, but I certainly believe that there are more than two of us out of two hundred that do. So why didn’t others dance? Because they would look foolish or drunk, and foolish and public drunken behavior are not acceptable. So the ones that wanted to dance gave up their individualism for the acceptance of others.

You might say, well that is with odd social behavior, but we have complete individualism with our thinking and ideas? Do we really have individualism there? We have subcultures within our culture that accept various ideas when you are within those subculture. Try leaving your subculture into another, and share your ideas with those in the group outside your own. What responses to you really get.

It seems that if we really did celebrate individualism in our Country then new ideas outside of subgroups would be appreciated. I have personally experienced this discrimination a lot throughout my life.

What seems to happen to those of us who might really have strong individualistic ideas or behaviors, and in my opinion is everyone, is we suppress it for our public audience so that we can be socially respected. Now do you think that is true liberty, or have we become gerbils on the wheel going round and round in behaviors to get the approval that is necessary to live in this society.

            And gerbils on a wheel going round and round seems like a true inward prison of sorts.

            What it would take for us to change that behavior, is to really take a look at our own life, and see if we are really living as an individual or are we caught in the wheel, and how can we do both so that we can be a part of the whole, while being an individual, and not be a prisoner of peer pressure.

            Peer pressure is not only for kids at school, we are all exposed to it one way or another.