Difference of Miming a Leaf...

                The Difference of Miming a Leaf and Mimicking a Magazine
             
              I can still hear the sweet, cheerful song of the bright robin and the startled rustle of a rabbit bounding through the leaves. Deer paths that I knew so well snaked through the undergrowth until they reached the dribbling crick. I remember the sweeping canopies above me. Those trees sheltered the majority of my childhood years.
                Beneath their whispering leaves, I would walk for hours everyday. I remember splashing in the rippling waters of the stone-bed crick and examining every tiny flower and insect I could find. I felt a complete peace within every piece of the forest –first in every rock, then every bird, and eventually even within myself. In this pure serenity of the forest, I heard a voice. Not a voice of men, but of myself, my personal inward voice. Because of my seclusion in my earliest years, I was clueless to America’s society. I had no models to look up to, nothing to mimic. But I learned how to be my own person, and I found my own identity just by being alone with myself. My independence grew and I learned to rely on my own consciousness rather than that of another’s.
                Children who live in cities, or ones who have just been exposed to society, see people and hear voices. They imitate these archetypes and morph into an indiscernible mass of children. There is no identity, no individuality. Stereotypes are channeled by the media, funneled by popularity, and reinforced by pictures pasted on magazine covers.
Children grow up thinking they need to fair up to these expectations and are told to ‘try and fit in’ rather than, ‘be yourself’.
         In the forest, none of these elements were present, no magazines, no images, and definitely no television. I had no guidelines of who I was supposed ‘to be’ or what I was supposed to ‘act like’.  I couldn’t ape the birds, or mine a falling leaf; yet I had my inner voice to follow. Little did I realize, that when I was following a simple deer path, I was following the path to my individuality. Just like a flower, I truly blossomed in that forest.