“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

When one’s life is stripped down bare, all dignity removed, the only thing that is left for them is their mind. There is nothing like the human mind, so intricate that except for that mind itself, no one can understand it. Though all humans try to express what’s going on in their mind through ways of dance, letters, language, communication, and writing, the mind is the only place that expresses it all, and no one except the beholder can access and understand it. Not only that, but one’s own mind is the only real privacy in their world. Because it is the only place one truly is comfortable in and understands, one must rely upon themselves—their thoughts, dreams, morals, and ideas—to guide them. In a world where everybody wants not just to be unique, but also to stand out because of that, everyone attempts to avoid conformity. However, this can only be seen as a conformist action. So what is one to do when the typical teenager is now the atypical teenager? You depend on yourself to guide you through the maze of so called black and white conformists and noon-conformists. And since no one can understand what goes through your head, all that you do is unique because no one else thinks that way. I’ve grown up with three siblings, all amazing and all unique. Just by nature, I am the quieter child, and in the past I’ve had trouble with discovering who the real me is. Our minds are what make us all unique, and if we are not allowed to be unique, we still have our minds, within which we are yet still unique. Winston Smith lives in a world that barely allows one to be unique. However, we learn early on that Winston is actually very unique, if only in his mind. With Winston, it started out as a feeling and then grew until it was all he could think about, and then those thoughts traveled