If you have a sibling who’s a few years older or younger than you, you might remember how your parents used to dress you in matching outfits.
In my case, it was me and my younger brother – and I hated it.
Hated how my mum always made us wear those denim ‘3 quarter’ shorts and bright shirts, especially on civvies day at school, when everyone else was flexing in their favourite outfits.
I felt like a walking copy, my brother’s smaller shadow trailing beside me.
My friends would taunt me. Ifaniselana nentwana yakowayo le – they’d mock me for wearing an outfit that looked exactly like my younger brother’s.
As the older one, this was something I was meant to be ashamed of. And of course, I was.
It felt belittling.
We’d always argue with my mum about why I had to wear the same clothes as a little kid, but my brother didn’t seem to care – if anything, he liked it.
Maybe you hated it too. Or maybe you were the annoying younger sibling who grinned at the idea of looking just like your older one.
That urge to match – to fit in, to be like someone else, doesn’t stop with childhood outfits. It follows us into friendships, workplaces, even politics. We copy those around us, hoping to belong.
We gravitate towards people with similar interests – just like we once wore the same clothes as our siblings.
That’s all fine – until it creates echo chambers: spaces where we only hear opinions that match our own.
It might sound obvious, but a lot of conflict – even war – starts this way.
Conflict often starts when one side refuses to see another’s view and insists on their own.
We shouldn’t expect everyone to think like us – yet we push for it daily.
At a global level, wars are fought and lives destroyed because of this.
On a personal level, families and friendships fall apart.
Why?
Because we insist that others see things from our “superior” perspective – and when they don’t, we punish them for it.
It’s strange how we make life so difficult.
Why can’t we accept the simple truth that we’re all different – and that there’s more beauty in that than in trying to squeeze everyone into the same mould?
I’ve also been guilty of this more times than I’d like to admit.
I get frustrated when people don’t see things from my point of view.
But that frustration says more about me than it does about them.
And who gave me the right to decide how others should see the world – people who’ve lived through completely different experiences?
Different homes. Different struggles. Different environments.
If you and your sibling – raised in the same home – don’t see the world the same way, why would anyone else?
So why do we expect strangers, colleagues, even nations, to see life through our lens?
The cost of that mindset is devastating – from broken families to broken nations.
But life is richer when we stop resisting difference and start learning from it.
Your passions matter. So do mine.
And so do those of people who are nothing like us.
We each bring something irreplaceable to the table.
Why isn’t everyone like you?
Maybe because the world only needed one of you.
And that’s more than enough.
© Phumzile