The Rare Man
Four in one hundred thousand
You know, Kipling once wrote of the thousandth man. The friend who stays when all others walk away. The one you can trust when the walls come down, when the sky turns dark and you're left standing in the ruins. But what if, what if you're not the thousandth man?
What if you're are more rare? Not one in a thousand, not one in ten thousand. You are one of four in a hundred thousand. You're the four born with a coloboma microphthalmia Words most people can't even pronounce, let alone understand.
You know them well. They shaped your face. They shaped your vision. And they shaped the way the world sees you.
People don't always understand why you shift your gaze. Why your eyes never seem to settle. Why you tilt your head just so searching for focus, looking not just at them, but into them. You see, for you, depth isn't granted.
You don't perceive it like others do. But that's the great contradiction. Isn't it? Because you see deeper than most men ever will.
You read the shadows, the subtle shifts. You've been training your entire life not to see the world, but to understand it. Takes work to hold someone's gaze. Work, focus, fire.
But you do it. Because every time you meet someone's eyes, it's not just a glance. It's an act of defiance. You're saying, I see you. And more importantly, I want you to see me.
There's an urge inside you. I know it. The urge to be worthy. Not because you feel lesser, but because you feel called to be more.
To be a man. But more than that, to be more of a man than others, not measured in steps or symmetry, but in substance, in spirit, in fight. Because when you're the four, you don't blend in. You stand out and not just because of how you look, but because of what you've chosen to become.
Some men are remembered for medals, others for money. But you, you carve your name into the honours board at Grey College not with chalk, but with courage. You write your name in gold leaf and grit because you're not just living with your difference. You're leading with it.
The four in one hundred thousand are not mistakes. They're not accidents. They are miracles. Walking, breathing, luminous miracles of will.
And the world may not understand you. It may try to define you, box you, dim you, but you, you do not go quietly. You shine. So I say to you now, reach for the sky.
Seize the strange, spectacular, imperfect life. Make it yours. Not in spite of your [difference](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKlsBW9P-Uw/?utmsource=igembed&igrid=AwH6zKSxVBBIgQSFJjLaPg “difference”), but because of it.
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