Herd Mentality

Have you ever found yourself contemplating life in an unusual location?

In 2022 it was a Toddler Music Group for me. As the 2 year olds around us dutifully copied the music teacher, my eyes came to rest on my own daughter: completely ignoring the ‘instruction’ in front of her and happily doing her own thing with the provided instruments. I had an instant flash back to my son, 4 years earlier, tearing around the same room ‘dancing’ to the music whilst the rest of the children sat and copied the teacher.

My knee-jerk both times was to gently encourage them to do what the other children were doing - copying. All the requests from the teacher were to do so and so my own conditioning clearly kicked in: this is what we do ok? We follow the leader, we do what this person is doing.

But this time I stopped myself. She was happy, ignoring the group around her. She looked up at me and grinned. I grinned back and nodded. How often do children look up to be rewarded for their own creativity and instead are met with ‘no, like this’?

It got me thinking about how this creativity, this individuality is often chipped away at, from before we can even really talk. Of course copying and mimicking is part of social development and how we learn from others - but do we take it too far? Could this herd mentality and self-doubt we often see in adulthood be balanced if we were taught earlier to look inward, to trust our own feelings?

How I wish that was a message I’d taken in earlier in life, as opposed to feeling like I should somehow ‘follow the others’.