In a world that preaches individuality but demands conformity, we find ourselves caught in the quiet violence of assimilation. It begins subtly like water slowly shaping stone. A slight alteration in accent to avoid being asked, “Where are you from?”. A hesitant laugh at a joke you don’t find funny, but don’t want to question. The deliberate shelving of a vibrant piece of your culture, your quirks, yourself, because it’s easier to blend in than to stand out. This is the art of survival in borrowed skins, where the cost of belonging is the slow erosion of who you are.
To blend in is to barter your essence for acceptance. The bargain seems simple at first a quiet trade, like slipping into a borrowed coat at a party. It fits just enough to pass, though it pinches in places you don’t talk about. Over time, the coat becomes your skin. It moulds to you until you forget where it ends, and you begin. You start to speak in echoes, parroting the cadence of those around you, replacing the vocabulary of your childhood with something flatter, simpler, and sanitized for broader consumption. You eat foods that taste of nothing but neutrality because the spices of your heritage are labelled too much. Your laughter grows muted, your gestures smaller. You become smaller.
Assimilation is not merely an act; it is an unspoken contract. It is the unmarked toll bridge we cross every day as we commute between who we are and who we’re expected to be. For 20-somethings, this toll is particularly steep. We are sold the fantasy of self-discovery, but only if that self fits neatly into curated boxes, quirky but not too weird, ambitious but not threatening, cultured but not foreign. We are told to be ourselves but in ways that are palatable, digestible, and, above all, marketable. In this age of hyper-visibility, we don’t blend in for acceptance, we blend in for survival. This loss is not sudden but accumulative. A thousand quiet deaths until you are left mourning a version of yourself that no one else remembers.
The pressure to blend in is deeply rooted in both our evolutionary biology and the constructs of modern society. From a scientific perspective, humans are inherently social creatures whose survival once depended on belonging to a group. In prehistoric times, exclusion from the tribe meant vulnerability to predators and loss of resources; the instinct to conform was not merely advantageous but essential for survival. Psychologically, this instinct has evolved into a profound need for social validation, driven by mechanisms like mirror neurons, which predispose us to mimic others’ behaviours and expressions to foster connection. Philosophically, the concept of “the other” has long been a source of fear and division, what lies outside the boundaries of the familiar is often perceived as threatening. Modern culture, with its emphasis on efficiency and categorization, exacerbates this pressure by rewarding homogeneity. The workplace, the marketplace, and even social media favour those who fit predefined templates, reducing individuality to a liability. This confluence of ancient instincts and contemporary demands creates an environment where blending in feels safer than standing out, even if it erodes the essence of what makes us human: our capacity for diversity and authenticity.
This war between individuality and conformity is one of the great paradoxes of modern society, a tension that leaves us teetering on the edge of contradiction
At its core, this war exposes the fragility of societal constructs. The demand for individuality has boiled down; to branding and commodification. Uniqueness is only valuable insofar as it can be marketed, repackaged, and sold.
The need to fit right in fosters a constant self-surveillance, where every action is measured against an invisible benchmark: Am I too much? Not enough? It’s a dance as exhausting as it is contradictory, leaving us perpetually anxious about whether we’ve struck the elusive balance between blending in and standing out. Philosophically, this tension reflects a society that values innovation but fears disruption, that celebrates difference but punishes deviation. Individualism becomes performative, a mask we wear to appease the collective while maintaining the illusion of uniqueness.
Yet, the most insidious part of blending in is not the loss of identity; it is the normalization of this loss, the quiet acceptance that forgetting is inevitable, even necessary. Cultural amnesia creeps in like a fog, erasing the sharp edges of who we once were through the subtle, almost invisible pulls. The narrative insists that growth demands shedding the old, and that adaptation requires severing ties to the essence of our identity.
This forgetting is framed as growth, as adaptation, but in truth, it is a hollowing out, a gradual surrender of the rich and textured elements of individuality to a flattened, collective sameness. Over time, we become fluent in forgetting, unmoored from the essence of our identity, until the act of remembering feels foreign, even futile.
But what if we stopped? What if we peeled back these borrowed skins and let the world see us in all our messy, unpolished glory? What if we reclaimed the languages we’ve left behind, the traditions we’ve diluted, the boldness we’ve been taught to suppress? What if, instead of blending in, we expanded the spaces around us to accommodate the fullness of who we are? This is not a call to rebellion but a plea for remembrance. To remember that individuality is not a performance, but a reclamation. Remember that blending in is not the same as belonging. Belonging is a space where you are celebrated, not tolerated. A space where you can show up as yourself without apology or pretence.
The question is: Are we brave enough to start?
