I made this post because I want to make sense of who I am. I’ve had a funny relationship with being a misfit. Initially, I didn’t even realize that it was the case. I accumulated some unpleasant experiences around it. Before I properly realized what it was that was bothering me, I had begun to try to turn it into “my thing”. My username throughout my teen years was “visaisahero” – I somehow figured that if I was going to be the centre of attention almost everywhere I went, if it was going to be difficult for me to hide, then I was going to make the most of it.
Anyway, here are some of the ways in which I’m a misfit.
- Unique name (only Visakan Veerasamy in the world, 2nd most prominent/significant Visakan according to Google)
- Left-handed in a right-handed world
- Youngest child by 7 years (oldest was 20+ older than me)
- Indian in a Chinese-majority country
- Inarticulate in my native tongue (Tamil)
- Read books when most played in playgrounds
- Agnostic in a Hindu family
- Size 14 feet in a size 9 country
- 190cm in a 170cm city
- GEP kid in non-GEP system
- Parents Sec-sch educated where most had uni-educated parents
- Did not go to uni when most peers did
- Married at 22 when average couple marries around 26-35
Have you ever instantly developed a deep admiration for somebody for who they are as a person? I last felt this way about Barack Obama (even before he became POTUS44), and I feel similarly about Bozoma Saint John – Uber's current Chief Brand Officer. Her story is remarkable to me
— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) December 17, 2017
He has spent his life as a non-Hawaiian in Hawaii. As a Christian with a Muslim name. As a black dude in white society. As a half-white dude in black society. And so on and so forth.
This is a man who, unlike most of us, had absolutely no script to follow. He had absolutely no figures whose behavior he could model. He “belonged” to no group at all. Even in my crappiest days, I was still a white middle class man who could hang out with other white middle class men – I always intuitively had a place, an in-group. Look at those photos – Barack Obama has literally never, at any point in his life, been able to “blend in.” He has never been able to follow the rutted paths. He has always, always, had to make his own way and be a person who has no analogue, no archetype.
He has never been able to rely on being the black guy, or the white guy, or the poor guy, or the rich guy, or the Christian guy, or the muslim guy, and on and on and on.
He has only, ever, been able to be Barack Obama.
He literally set the mold for his entire life, himself. [link]