Don’t sweat it. Nobody asked us to be perfect here, although, now that I think about it, nobody ever asked us to be unique either, so perhaps we do have a reason to be concerned.

So many people in this world, whether they know it or not _ whether they’ll admit it or not _ are living in the shadow of somebody else.

I’m not sure if it’s cultural or what, but it seems as though quite a lot of people in our country, men and women, are taught that "fitting in" means becoming a uniform, nearly indiscernible part of the world.

Sometimes it manifests itself in indecisiveness; sometimes it appears as though we are devoid of emotion or other sorts of personal expressions that make us who we are.

Sometimes it means losing part of ourselves just to fit the mold.

It’s really pretty simple to fade into the background and allow someone else to dominate over us, and we just follow along. That might be fine for a while, that might be how it works out while we are children, but who is there to think our thoughts for us and run our lives the way we long to live them once we grow up?

What could possibly be wrong with expressing ourselves just the way we are and living a life that is right for us? Is fear the reason, or is it something else?

I never could figure that out when I was growing up, and here I am still wondering about it all, even still.

It’s like there is this unspoken law that governs our culture that says "thou shalt only be over 65 years old in order to have the privilege of speaking up and freely expressing oneself without being rejected."

We have so many expectations for how things are supposed to be or what people are supposed to do. We get caught up in those kinds of rules, which, in reality are nothing more than personal opinions, and we forget to leave any wiggle room for people to be individuals to live and learn in ways that mean something to them.

So, the big question here is: Why is being unique and wanting to live life in a unique way all of a sudden this crime against social norms? We weren’t all born from a copy machine, so why are we all "supposed to be" facsimiles of one another?

No wonder most people don’t want to risk being responsible for making decisions. God forbid they make the wrong one!

No wonder people are too timid to share their true thoughts and feelings.

It’s no fun being disliked for simply having different personal preferences or ways of handling circumstances than other people might.

The fact of the matter is that nobody wants his head to be prematurely bitten off _ no matter what.

You know what, though? In my own personal study of native culture, I’ve come to realize that the social fears we have in our culture are just so absurd, in comparison.

It has taken me some time to get up the courage to defy the silly fears and to sort through and rid myself of certain nonsense that has been so well-etched into my life by others; but the various parts that do not fit me and my life just needed to go. There is no sense in holding onto extra things in life that either serve no purpose or take away my personal sense of worth.

Just because generations upon generations have done things a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean it fits into the construct of my life. And if it doesn’t fit, I toss it.

I’m learning to fight back a little now (I fight nicely for the most part), and I’m allowing myself the option of disagreeing with people and defending my right to not always be a mirror image of everyone else. If I decide that I want to adapt life to fit my individual needs or preferences, then that’s what I do.

If I’m not breaking the law, if I’m not being hurtful to other people, if I’m minding my own business and doing what I believe in and what makes sense to me in my life, I have no reason to feel badly about it, and I have no apologies to make.

As I’ve allowed my true self to shine through and as I’ve released some of the notions from my life that weren’t serving me in any kind of constructive way, it has been amazing at how much deeper my friendships have become. My whole life has shifted, and I did lose a lot of friends who couldn’t understand my metamorphosis at the time it was all happening, but it has just been amazing to me at how I kind of found where I belonged in life once I was finally able to let go of my silly need to be liked by everyone.

The fact of the matter is, not everyone is going to always be happy with everything I do and it’s not about looking a certain way or hanging around at the right bar, or getting involved with the right extracurricular activity.

None of those things ever mattered all that much. The way I ended up finding my niche was by putting in some time to find out who my authentic self really was, and that was when so much just started clicking into place in my life.

I still get people who disagree with me and feel the need to make me aware of how they feel. I occasionally get a finger-wagging from people who think I’m living my life all wrong, but that can hardly compare to the kind of contentedness I feel right where I am in life.

People’s attempts to tell me what to do or their attempts to heap guilt trips on me for various things I’ve chosen to explore in my life don’t even barely faze me. I am happy with my life, I know that I have self-worth and worth to other people.

So, whether anyone asked or not, I’m imperfect but very unique _ and that’s just how it is.

Kate Pavlacka, a graduate of the State University College at Oneonta, has been totally blind for about 10 years.