About a year ago, my friends and I were waiting in line at a local boba shop. The new seasonal summer drinks had just come out with flavors like "ruby and gold" and "pineapple iced milk tea", so naturally some of us wanted to try them out. (For the record, I actually had to look up these flavors from a year ago.) I was eyeing "ruby and gold" when one of my friends mentioned that he wanted to get it. I didn't want to copy him, so I said something like "I guess I gotta get something else then". He responded by telling me: "You shouldn't let other people's choice of drink affect what you get."

To be honest, I don't remember if I actually got the same drink as him. I think I did, but that wasn't what stuck in my mind. What I do remember is that (paraphrased) quote above, because I always did the opposite. Because I wanted to be different. There's a smug sense of superiority that you can get just by being different from others around you in some minor way. Maybe it's having an unpopular opinion on some TV show or movie. Or it's wearing some crazy combination of clothes. Or, in my case, it's simply just ordering a different boba drink. To be fair, it can be a good way to tell that someone is different or unique. But it's easy to fall in the trap of thinking that being different, or being original, is enough to show your authenticity. I mean, I was trying to drink something different, but it wasn't what I really wanted. Shouldn't I have just focused on enjoying my drink?

Quite recently, I got a haircut. To put my hair into context, it's long for a guy. Shoulder-length, black with hidden shades of brown that can only be seen under the sun, wavy curls on the bottom half from the perm about half a year ago - it was almost like a lion's mane with more curls the further down it went. I care a lot about my hair. I felt it matched my vibes throughout high school very well: a kind of thoughtfulness that took everything a bit too seriously with a bit of edginess (in a good way). Now that I'm nearly in my second year of college, I feel like I've changed a lot. I understand myself a bit more and I can be more mature, to be brief. So I felt it was time to move on. (Also perming your hair too much isn't healthy so I wanted to take a break from that.)

So now my hair is basically a short middle-part, only a few inches long on the top and less than an inch on the sides. I felt "clean", or like I've been released from my high school days. Anyways, I slowly started to show my friends, curious as to their reactions, and surprisingly I got mixed reactions. Most people were like "that's cool" and that was it. But some people told me they liked my old hair better. One comment really stood out to me: "it was a defining characteristic of you". No hate to that person, it was probably just an off-handed comment. But it made me think that, yes, my hair was more unique before and now it's just a middle-part that a bunch of other college-aged asian guys also had. I was no longer original. But I didn't really care. What mattered to me was that my hair matched who I was as a person. And if it just so happened that it was a middle-part, then I shouldn't really care even if everyone else had it. By forgoing originality, I can be completely authentic. And that feels a lot nicer than being stuck with hair that's a few years too old for me.