Our world is cliche.

It’s hard to stray from the vicious normalities of life. Being unique and different is hard. You might be viewed as weird or strange, but is that really what we fear?

I have blue eyes and blond hair; I look like an all-American girl. My life is as normal as can be; I have two happy parents, a sister whom I share everything with, and a family cat, and I go to the sunshine state of Florida during every spring break.

My outfits consist of tan Ugg boots, plain black leggings, Lululemon tops, and Patagonia pullovers—the basic outfit for the basic girl.

I struggle to pull away from the grasp society has on me, but as I look around at my friend group, cliches are all I see. Straightened hair, pretty teeth, and makeup-stained faces. Society has trained us all to be the same; we are no longer unique like snowflakes that litter the winter ground. We are only slightly different variations of each other.

I do believe that people have their own little quirks and ideas, but what truly makes us unique?

This question ponders at the back of my head, screaming to be answered, and I think I found the best answer I can.

It’s the little things that separate us but also bring us together. A majority of FHC students go to a college within the state of Michigan, the most popular ones being Michigan State and the University of Michigan. I have decided to go out of state for college unless I get into the University of Michigan. Does this make me non-cliche or just a different variation?

Does wanting to go on adventures with new people and friends while other people choose to sit for hours on end make me different? Does having a Snapchat and Instagram make me cliche?

Life will never answer these questions for us, so why do we still ask ourselves these silly questions when there isn’t an answer?

Go on the adventure, go to the college out of state, go shopping at the unpopular store, go be unique.

As I admitted before, I am extremely guilty for being just as cliche as the next girl, but I am trying to change. It’s sad to think I’m not living a life that’s entirely my own but a life that everyone else lives. We allow society to control our lives without batting an eye.

To look around school and see people who are the same with different names saddens me. None of us want to be cliche, but we all are.

I need to live my life like nobody is watching—and even that is cliche. We have grown up living a life full of cliche comments and cliche outfits, and because of it, our creativity has died. Creativity is now wearing white jeans past Labor Day and using emdashes in a sentence.

This world has lost the spunk it once had, and we find ourselves living through each other and feeding off each other’s ideas while claiming them as our own.

I beg you, go on the adventure, go to the out-of-state college, go shopping at the unpopular store, go be unique.