Another open letter to my seventeen year old and my almost teenager.

Dear Kids,

Today, both of you are at life’s important threshold, one is almost ready to walk out into the world, leaving behind the safety of home and the other steps into a phase where innocence begins to fade. As your Mum, I try to always do my best, don’t roll your eyes, you know what’s coming next. Read carefully and think clearly, I’ll try today, to expound on Uniqueness.

Peer pressure, a word you experience often enough to know its meaning and its implications. This is a word that will chase you all your life, it is not one that begins in your teenage years and gets left behind here. It is how you learn to deal with this fact of life that will set you apart making you the leader or the led. Whenever you are in a dilemma on whom to listen to, the temptations without or the conscience within, the desires of the heart or the brain that cautions, remember that the creator put the brain on top and the heart below it.

Though easier to follow, the footsteps of others, the path they carved was for them alone. It suited their purpose, it might not fit yours. Chart your own course, it might seem daunting but believe me when I say, it will be a lot less taunting. Does that mean you not learn from the achievements of others? No certainly, not.

“Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;”

(-H. W. Longfellow)

You must understand that there is a difference in your own path and following another’s. The satisfaction to be gained from endeavors that are based on our own convictions rather than on those that others have influenced are easier to live with than those followed blindly.

Each of you have in you a certain something that is yours to own, for there is no one else in the world truly like you in any way. The universe gives you your individuality and that is your strength. So recognize it, embrace it and revel in it. Your uniqueness is what defines you, what separates you from the rest.

Love, Mama