I remember when I was 10, in Year 4 at school, there was a cool kid in our class. Like every cool kid, most of the boys wanted to be like him and most of the girls had a crush on him. He was good at everything he did. I don’t remember the sequence of events that led to this moment, but one day my teacher sent everyone off to music class downstairs, but she told me to wait back so we could chat. I had no idea what was going on, of course, a classic 10-year-old boy.
She then proceeded to give me one of the greatest pieces of advice anyone has ever given me.
She told me that everybody in our class had their own jumper to wear. It wasn’t a real jumper, instead, it was a symbol of us living our own life. We were made to wear our jumper and our jumper was made for us. Not for anyone else. She said that recently, I’d been trying to wear someone else’s jumper. I’d been acting like him, speaking like him, making jokes like him and trying to do life his way. My teacher encouraged me to just let him do that. There was something else I was meant to do. Something different. It was his jumper to wear and I was trying to wear it.
I’ve never forgotten her advice, even 15 years later. I think that’s the best way I can sum up identity. We’re each made to wear a jumper that God made for us, not someone else’s.
WRITER: Jake Whittaker, Chaplain at Prescott College in Adelaide.