I feel left out at times.

We often mention the sentence when encouraging someone that we should never be too bothered by the opinions others have of us, yet how can we tune out opinions made by people closest to you? Even if it is our loved ones?

For me, I deliver parcels on a part-time basis to earn some side income. One can never earn too much these days in times of a pandemic as such. The parcel delivery industry is mainly dominated by males yet as a female, I felt like I should have the chance to try this out. My friend recommended me the job and said it will be a good experience and also an opportunity to earn some extra allowance.

After introducing this opportunity to my father, he decided to try it out together with me. I was very excited as not only I get to try something new, but I am doing so together with my father as we do not share many common activities.

On the first day like in most first day cases, nothing went as planned. The first thing my father said to me was: “Are you sure you want to do it? I don’t think you can though…” I replied: “I have not even tried!”. It was not just that, the eyes of other workers were staring and whispering among themselves. Even though I can’t hear but I am sure they are wondering: “What will a skinny girl be doing here? Can she help, or even….lift?” My father’s skepticisms made me even more bent on doing it well.

After many deliveries later, my performance was on par with the rest and at times I even offered to help those that could not finish but they are usually people around my age. The older ones would refuse my help mostly because they still think that I am not capable enough, which effectively just means they are looking down on my performance. Even up till today my father still thinks I am performing below average and tells me from time to time to to find something else to do.

Stereotypes often exist in our societies and might not always seem harmful upon first glance as it could very well be obscured by “genuine concern” yet it can be demotivating for people wanting to try out new things. Generation gaps further increases such occurrences of stereotyping. We often feel that we are not enough or perhaps because of our gender, skin colour, race or religion, we have lesser opportunities. My point here is that if we are determined, nothing can stand in our way of trying out what we have set our mind to do.