What makes you different from the people most like you?

A weird and confusing question with important implications. Also, Harry Potter.

Mar 18, 2024

From the time we’re children, we’re told that it’s okay to be different.

When I first wrote that sentence, I used the word “taught” instead of “told.”

But the truth is that while most of us are told that it’s okay to be different, we’re taught something else entirely. Because what we’re taught is about much more than the words people say to us. Plenty of parents, mentors, teachers, and caregivers say one thing is important with their words while sending a much stronger, opposite signal with their actions and values.

Guess which one kids pick up on most?

The upshot is that we’re often taught to be different in the “right” ways. We’re taught to be different up to a point, and that point is the moment we find the group in which we “fit.”

When I’m mentoring high-schoolers, one of the most common sources of angst they express is the feeling that there’s no group to which they feel they truly belong.

I usually tell them that as a high-schooler, I would often decline invitations to big parties and hide in bathroom stalls during school-wide events, because I didn’t feel like I could quite relate to any of the cliques or “niches” that tend to formulate in high school settings.

I explain that when you’re in high school, those groups feel like the only groups there are — until you go off to college or the workplace or simply outside your hometown, and you discover that the few hundred people in your school represented a poor statistical sample of the 8 billion people in the world at large.

You discover that there are connective groups for everyone, for every quirky interest, niche hobby, esoteric passion, and “odd” personality type.

This is good news. But it comes with a difficult-to-swallow pill: sometimes you can do things to seek out social connection in your current circle, but sometimes the answer is simply to wait.

Sometimes the dish we want to eat just isn’t on the menu, no matter how hard we look for it. It’s not going to suddenly appear. We have to suck it up until a new restaurant opens down the street.

But what about when we find our people?

What about that moment when you get your dream job, or you join a special interest club that’s right up your alley?

Are you done being different?

Often, we like to think we are. Sure, we may still be unique relative to the rest of the world, but in our little social circle — we’re peas in a pod. We match. We don’t have to feel “other.”

But then — uh oh.

Someone in your group says something about their beliefs, their passions, their perspective on the interest you all share, and you think — that’s not how I feel at all.

Then, to your horror, others in your group agree with them.

Wait, you think. Do I not belong in this group, either?

Stop right there.

This isn’t the M. Night Shyamalan twist you think it is, that moment in a thriller when the floor falls out from under you and everything you thought you could rely on crumbles.

This is something else entirely. This is the moment in the hero’s journey when she discovers her superpower, her true potential.

What makes you special isn’t the thing that makes you different from the rest of the world.

It’s the thing that makes you different from the people most like you.

To understand this a bit better, let’s talk about The Boy Who Lived.

Arguably the most iconic line from the Harry Potter series occurs early in the first book, when the hulking guardian Hagrid bursts through the door and proclaims:

“Harry — yer a wizard.”

(In the film version, it’s maybe more famously rewritten as: “Yer a wizard, Harry.”)

Up to this point in the narrative, we readers have been following the journey of this strange little boy who doesn’t quite belong, who is seen as odd and unwanted by everyone he encounters. Now, suddenly, he discovers why. He doesn’t belong to this world, the world of “muggles.” He belongs to the world of wizards.

But what happens next?

Harry goes to Hogwarts, he meets his wizard friends, and he fits in perfectly because he’s found his tribe. The end.

Nope.

Almost immediately, and in a pattern that will persist for the remainder of the seven-book series, Harry discovers time and time again that even among the people most like him, he doesn’t quite fit in.

He can speak to snakes, something only the evilest of evil wizards can usually do.

He excels in dark magic, magic generally forbidden by the “mainstream” wizarding community.

Harry goes from being a sore thumb to fitting like a glove, and then almost immediately becomes a sore thumb again.

But then, of course, those things that make Harry odd even among his “people” are the very things that ultimately empower him to do something no one else can — defeat Voldemort and restore peace to the world of wizards.

Harry’s journey doesn’t begin when end when he finds his tribe. That’s when his journey begins, the journey of finding out what makes him truly weird. That journey only ends when he discovers how to stop hating and running from his weirdness, and uses it to fulfill his ultimate potential.

When I started teaching at a university last year, I felt like Hagrid had burst through my door and proclaimed: “Taylor — yer a teacher.”

After my very first week of teaching, when people asked how things were going, I was unironically replying: “I think this is what I was meant to do.”

Then, of course, I discovered my own version of speaking to snakes.

I quickly found that some of the things my colleagues and mentors consider irritating quirks of the job were central to what brings me the most joy in my work. One-on-one mentoring with insecure students, dealing with confused and unskilled beginners, managing out-of-the-blue questions that veer the discussion in unexpected directions. These all thrilled me, and yet I was constantly being told these were the things I would have to “put up with.” I was constantly being apologized to for being given the exact opportunities that excited me most:

“Sorry you’ve got to deal with first-years.”

More generally, I’m fascinated by what makes for great teaching and effective learning, more than I am by research into the actual subject matter I happen to be teaching — in my case, creativity, performance, and soft skills. I love creating and writing and performing. But I love planning and delivering lessons.

I’ve also been told by my peers and supervisors (again, people I connect with on a personal level more than anyone else outside my closest family and friends) that "people who are really into studying learning and teaching” are seen as somewhat kooky or out-of-touch by the other academics.

Does that mean I don’t belong in academia? That these aren’t my “people?”

Nope.

It just means I’ve found my niche.

I’m a “classroom guy.” I want to be in the room with students — mentoring, teaching, designing and implementing curriculum.

I’ve found my version of talking to snakes.

In his mega-bombastic-ultra-forever bestseller Atomic Habits, James Clear puts it like this:

The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.

I don’t love this phrasing, because it suggests we’re fated to do the work we’re most competent at, not the work which brings us the most joy.

But it does remind us that our journey of self-discovery doesn’t end once we find our tribe. In fact, that’s when the real self-discovery begins.

So ask yourself: What makes me different from the people I’m most like?

Discover and embrace the answer to that question, and you’ll do magic.

What makes you different from the people most like you?

A weird and confusing question with important implications. Also, Harry Potter.

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