Collective Indvidual

It’s funny. Growing up the world is an entirely different place, full of secret s and mysteries, how hunks of metal can fly, friends only you can see, stuffed animals as pets.  Ordinary places become treacherously full of adventure and intriguingly dangerous fun.  They teach us anything is possible. They teach us lies like Christopher Columbus discovered America and Pluto is a planet (complete with paper mache replicas of the solar system). 

Then, we grow up. The older we get, the less possible our dreams become. The less energy we have to be the person we saw ourselves growing up to be. Discouraged by the lies we were told, we’ve solved all those mysteries of airplanes, forget to have an imagination, and dream only when we sleep. We fall into step with the people around us, fitting molds that we collectively established to maintain order.

We search for someone to share our life with, in hopes that person can tell us who we are, but then they only tell us who they think we should be or might be and what we should want. While our friends only tell us who we were, everyone is forgetting each experience shapes and molds us into someone different. Ever changing we think “Who am I?” should always have the same answer, but no one answers the same.

We play so many roles in life from brother, daughter, mother, uncle, convict, provider, protector, predator. We are someone different to everyone in our life. We are dynamic and full of life. We can fit into many molds. We can write and sing, dance or crawl, shout or whisper, hide or seek. Despite what we do, we leave an impression in this world with everyone we meet, every life with encounter. Sometimes we crash into each other and sometimes just brush past like two people headed in opposite directions on a crowded sidewalk. 

As such collective individuals, perhaps Instead of using our friends, family, and strangers as a reflection in the mirror, we should use them more like clues to our quest of life and self-discovery.  Break all the molds and embrace life as the journey it is and make it everything we ever wanted it to be.