For me, one of the most desirable things in an object is its customization potential. I’ve always loved the possibility of being able to modify something to my liking, no matter what it was: as a child I modified video games, altering the characters and stories, as a teenager it was the same with my clothes, sewing and cutting clothes or even drawing and writing on them. Somehow it made the object feel more mine, obviously, because it suddenly became unique. In addition to this, the object also felt more alive, as if the experience of modification was now a shared memory between me and the object itself. Like a process we’d lived through together.
Personalization is something fascinating for everyone, as it allows us to establish those peculiar, even strange, relationships with our belongings or even certain experiences. It is a way to give space to certain aspects of our intimacy, to those weird thoughts, or those innocent fixations that would otherwise stay in the dark. But above all, it is a way for something, such as an object or a product, to go beyond and acquire new value. It is also a way to express ourselves and, consequently, to know and explore our identity, to mold and expand it if we so desire. We can easily see this with fashion and the clothes we wear, our accessories, the profile pictures in our social networks, the cell phone cover and the model of the phone itself, the background image of our screens and even in the decoration of our homes.
We enjoy those opportunities in which we can feel unique, we enjoy the company of those who don’t see us as the others and who really know us and listen to us, we rejoice in being recognized for a task that we did well and that, perhaps, no one else could have done. At the same time, we find it extremely difficult to step away from the herd, and I mean really take a different path. Irony is beautiful and occasionally cruel. We enjoy traveling, meeting new people and different cultures, but don’t go overboard with customs that may seem extreme, rude or even inhumane to us!
We may like to be considered unique, but not to the point of actually being weird. Almost as if we want to be the most special beings within the parameters established by the community, society, family or group of friends. These parameters can be aesthetic, how you look or what clothes you wear, they can be ethical or moral in relation to your legislation, religion or popular beliefs, and they can define your lifestyle in the deepest way proposing, for example, the cult of work or expansive socializing as a synonym of a satisfied and functioning human.
The problem lies not in the existence of the group, of course, nor in the values or parameters it proposes. The problem lies in laziness and unawareness that lead you down a foreign path, a path traced or indicated by others and that, if you are guided by the fear of transgressing its limits, leads to deep dissatisfaction. To that uneasiness and that emptiness that you sometimes feel in your chest, that feeling of searching for something without knowing exactly what. That same thing which makes you doubt a little bit of what you have and have achieved in life, of where you are at this moment or even who you are. It is the same reason why many times you end up reacting automatically, even if you don’t like or you don’t agree with your own reaction. Are you familiar with this?
The first step towards a different path is to make conscious choices rooted in the present. Not on principle, not just because, not because it doesn’t really matter or because all in all it’s not hurting me. This is the first effort, and it must be constant. I can mentally convince you that, in the end, there is really no such thing as making a mistake or failing in life. Both are comparative concepts that depend on external standards and objectives. But I am interested in shaking you up and moving you to action: it is decisions, actions and experiences that really make us change, because they make us live. Now, please think of three things you have wanted to do in your life that you haven’t done, perhaps because they are too out of the ordinary. Think seriously about the worst that could happen if you did them and concretely evaluate if it is worth continuing to procrastinate. Now go, go crazy, explode or implode, embody your unbridled, loving passion.
Now, before concluding, I would like to share with you the poem that moved me and guided me to write this article:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The road not taken, in Robert Frost, Mountain Interval (1916)
Taking the road less traveled requires some effort, the effort to be and stay present, to choose consciously, so that life is not something that just happens to us. In the end, that’s what makes all the difference.
To what extent are you going to inhibit yourself, following an unconscious flow, others’ beliefs and principles, seemingly safe zones?
How far are you going to go before you make a conscious choice and make a difference, your difference?
At what point do you decide that you are worth the effort?
