“All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.”
Regret. That is a concept I have never allowed myself to be familiar with. The reason I chose to live by this was because, I believe that everything in our lives, big or small, bad or good, happens for a reason. Each of these experiences leaves a mark on us, and teaches us a lesson which we can carry with ourselves for a long time. Relating this to the topic of the essay, we can say that these experiences are our ingredients, and once it is all put together it makes us who we are today.
I was born in Mumbai, one of India’s biggest cities. I was brought up in Nigeria and I moved to Dubai when I was only 11. Shuffling from 3 very diverse places has made a huge impact on the person I am today. Growing up, most of my closest friends were Nigerians, this was one of the reasons I was not exposed to racism at a young age. There was never an issue of race or skin colour, even with the cultural diversity present. Everyone was extremely friendly and accepting of one and other, which was what made it a perfect environment for me to grow up in. Being brought up in such a way, lead me to being a very open minded and lively individual. I never had a problem when it came to making friends, since I was always taught to be accepting of everyone no matter how different they might be.
Moving to Dubai gave me a cultural shock since I was introduced to various types of discrimination with racism being the most evident. Going to an international school I faced a lot racism because majority of the people had a stereotypical view of Indians and their culture. “You’re Indian, so you must be poor”, “You’re Indian, so you must be uncivilized”. Being only an 11-year told and having to hear people talk about me and my home country like that for the first time was not easy. It made it difficult for me to be myself. From that day onwards I had two separate personalities, one which was the “real” me, and one which was the “white wannabe school” me. I spent years pretending to be someone I was not, until I grew up and got tired of having to live that way. I decided I’d rather be myself and have people mock me, instead of being someone else and surround myself with people who don’t really know me. In the autobiography, Malcolm always thought that being black was bad, because he based his own opinion on what people around him thought. This was until he went to Boston and was exposed to a different lifestyle where black people were treated as equals. My situation was similar since me growing up was my exposure, which then made me realize everyone is an equal, although not everyone is determined to realize that and be themselves.