This is our most important (and difficult) job

J. R. Eyerman, The Howard Greenberg Collection

In 2022 during my MSc programme I decided to take a course quite different from the usual, and I was usually the only African in the class.

I remember one time, we were discussing a reading and sharing our analysis and thoughts on the material. The conversation was going round the class–we were seated in a semicircle. And something quite striking happened to me.

As everyone from the right of the classroom started talking, I realised something. These guys all shared essentially identical perspectives. I panicked because I was thinking very differently.

It was an almost natural reaction.

How was everyone going in one direction, and I was thinking something totally different?

I must be wrong! Automatically, my brain started to redraft my divergent perspective to fit that of the others.

It was such a shocking, unconscious, pressure to conform.

But, on second thought, this is not really shocking! It is natural, hard-wired into me as a human being to want to fit into my class or, really, in any other room where I find myself.

There was a significant study done some few years ago involving 106 chimpanzees, 32 orangutans, and 105 2-year-old children. They found that these two species of apes could count better than the children. But the children, however, had more sophisticated social learning skills.

The children in the study would readily abandon their preferred behaviour to copy that of others, but chimpanzees and orangutans would almost never adjust their behavior to fit those of others.

There’s a reason why human kids do better at conforming than at maths–in comparison to chimpanzees and orangutans. We evolved as creatures of tribes. We have a strong need to belong to tribes. Evolutionary not being part of a tribe is the same as death. Out in the wild, you need people to watch your back when you sleep and you return the favour. To be banished is to die. To conform to the rules and conventions of the tribe is life itself. This is also good for the tribe when everyone knows their place and works like every other person without questioning or running against the grain.

Everything in social life pulls us away from being ourselves, whether in the classroom, at a party or speaking on a panel.

I became aware of my evolutionary brain in the classroom that morning pushing me to be like all the others–but I caught myself and shared what I originally had in mind.

Here’s what happened. The professor had us all pause to process and deep dive into some critical questions my thoughts raised for the classroom. So it was helpful and generous that I shared my original thoughts.

It can be incredibly difficult to be ourselves

Recently I was working with a group of educators and students from Nigeria going to speak in Geneva. While we went through their plans and speeches for the event, I reflected on my classroom experience with them. And I told them that as the go to Geneva, they will most likely be different–in life experience, in opinion and perspective and in so much more. But it is crucial to accept this difference, I told them, and not to contend with it. Because sharing your difference is a generous act. The people around you may not have another opportunity to hear again from someone like you, with your unique story and experience. Conformity then is an act of intellectual vandalism against ourselves, and also upon others.

Indeed, it can be incredibly difficult to be ourselves. I often have to remind myself that it’s ok to be different, to stand out and not be like everyone else–whether I’m at a party and prefer to drink tea in a corner engaged in quiet conversation instead of in the middle of everyone else engaged in loud hearty laughter.

But being oneself is itself a challenging project that takes all our life to figure out.

I’m convinced that one of our biggest and most important duties is to unravel exactly who we are!

Our calling is to achieve autonomy—to achieve the dignity that arises from being the captain of our own lives, and a masterful, autonomous, self-directed actor in the world. In other words, to not simply go with the flow, but to know what we want and attain the ability to chart our own course.

But getting there means actually knowing what we believe, feel and value and then expressing these in all that we do with clarity, courage, and integrity.

This project of being our authentic selves demands something of us that isn’t found out there in the world but deeply within us. It is already there.

It is the ultimate collection of all your unique gifts, skills, abilities, interests, talents, stories, challenges, limitations, insights, and wisdom. It is you without the programming that has pre-decided who you are supposed to be.

In a world of screens and resultant pressure from peers near and far, self-knowledge is really hard. But it is worth getting started on this lifelong project…

My first step towards that is to spend more time in my week to be quiet and let my thoughts turn inward into myself. I journal more now because I want to learn more about who I am.

Will you join me on this important project?

This essay was first published in Finding North, my weekly Newsletter