It is a known fact that whenever you are about to do something, or even think of something that is not right, your body gives you a sign. The most common sign is this funny feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach. You don't even want to do it, but you go ahead and do it anyway. What is that force that pushes you, or maybe pulls you? Is it you, or is it someone called “peers”.
Peer pressure, what a loathsome alliteration, isn’t it? Nevertheless, plenty of young (and even not so young, I am told), impressionable minds fall prey to it everyday. This number is only increasing. Peer pressure is known to have severe, life altering and far reaching consequences like dip in self-confidence, poor academic or sports performance, adoption of dangerous habits, etc.
Peer pressure came knocking on my door back in the fifth grade. I was pulled outside my true self and became friends with the most coveted and “happening” group of girls. These were the ones with all the sparkly hair clips and glimmering bracelets. This was the kind who never ran during PE but chose to take a stroll in their dainty, white belles, and looked down upon the “minions” sweating it out on the field.
I was nothing like them, but in my quest for acceptance and (now I know) “false” admiration, I wore a wide beaming smile and hung out with them (more like followed them like a lamb) everyday. It wasn't like they were evil, or bore any malice towards me, its just that we were different. Poles apart actually, but their glitter seemed like a halo to me at that time.
All seemed well at first, but as time stretched, those little signs started making an appearance (remember, that funny feeling in the pit of the stomach?). My “glittery” friends rolled their eyes and spiritlessly sighed while I attempted to catch their attention and narrate some incident. They passed condescending remarks to snub me off. Then came the massive deal breaker: they did not want me to go to the library!
Let me give you a bit of a background here. I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and the school library used to be my safe haven, my second home. Every day during lunch hour at school, I used to have a small ritual: run to the cafeteria, gobble down lunch, then rush to the library to issue a new book for the coming week. It was blissful. Unfortunately, this euphoric ritual was broken when my friends wanted me to stop visiting the library during Lunch, and accompany them in their daily endeavours, which included endless loops of chitchat, gossip and making fun of others around them. I half-heartedly joined them for a few days, but couldn't take it any longer. While I smiled on the outside, I cried on the inside. I longed for my books. So I told them I wanted to go to the library instead, and they said “sure”, but they could not continue being friends with me then.
I was horrified. The termination of our friendship meant as if I would not be a recognised being anymore. It was like my very existence depended on their approval and acknowledgement. So I gave up the library, and they gave me the grand status of being their “best friend”. It should have been, but strangely it was not, the best feeling in the world.
I started lying to my true “best-friend”, my mother. When she asked me whether I had issued any new books, I recited a list of excuses ranging from “I didn’t get the time” or “the library was closed”. Each day felt like punishment. I was unable to cope up with this pretentious life of falsehood and dishonesty. The guilt and remorse kept building up with every lie that escaped my lips, and turned into a ticking time bomb of distress and anguish. One day, this bomb blew up. I cried my heart out to my mother, explaining between sobs how my friends didn't want me to go to the library and how I had been lying to her all this time. Most of my tears were shed in regret that apart from my mother, I had been lying to myself. My mother, without passing any judgement, heard each and every word, gently wiped my tears and made me see sense. I was my own being, nobody chose for me. The only approval I needed to do anything was mine (and of course, my mother’s!).
Now that I am an eleventh grader and at a juncture in my life where my priorities lie in building my erudition, preparing myself for college and thinking about my future, this mountain of pressure that I was carrying on my meek little shoulders seems so trivial and laughable. I could have utilised my time much more constructively than I did.
Looking back, I also think that this life-lesson was very important. I wouldn’t have been wiser and typing this article had I not taken the pressure of trying to emulate others, and then see “the light”. I learnt that others around you may just be being themselves, and here you are, enamoured by all the glitter (literally, in my case) which is not the real you.
Peer pressure, I think, is not forced upon you by others. In football parlance, it is a “self-goal”.
When it comes to peer-pressure, it is up to you, “take it or leave it”!
By Tavleen Kaur Bhatia
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