Courage

Finally the urge to write something overwhelms me!  Thank God for that or I would never write anything.

February has been a cat and mouse game.  Every now and then Spring peeks her head out, and I run after it, and then Schwuup! she is gone.  Just as I give up hope, there she is again, and I, feeling tempted, try so hard to grab a hold of her.  Sooner or later I'll get my hands on it, or in it.

For me Spring signifies everything it should or does.  New life, fresh beginnings, and all that mushy stuff.  I like to get my hands dirty in the spring.  Planting, planting, planting................there is just something utterly amazing about watching something grow.  I love it.

I have been thinking alot lately about individuality.  About how people try so hard to be different from one another and the question is why?  From what I have observed in my short lifetime is that no matter how hard we try we are never that different.  We all seem to move in a cyclical manner, certain people at certain times, we generally have the same opinions about what is right and wrong, thus political correctness and general consensus.  And how is it that you can be driving down a lonely dirt road and when you get to the stop sign another car comes along?  Did you and the other driver leave the house at the same time, for the same reason and if so what prompted you?  It is very possible that you end up following that car right to the grocery store.  I am not sure about you but I find that really creepy.


If this is the case, and I am sure sociologists and psychologists would concur, then why don't we just lay down our "weapons" and let it be so?  What pushes us towards individualism?  Why do we actually want to stand out?

People are afraid of group psychology and yet it seems to me that it has been instrumental in the survival of the species.  Just as it has been for other groups of animals that live in social hierarchies.  I have never seen a cow trying not to be a cow, or a deer trying to look like a moose.  What happens to us when we think like that?  Is it good?  Is it detrimental?  Is it normal?  I believe it is...........normal that is.  That is really the irony in the whole thing!  Individuality is normal!

From what I have observed the threat of blending in has driven us as a whole to stand out.  The urge for social acceptance by the group pushes us into alternative lifestyles, hipster clothing, anime haircuts, heavy metal music and anywhere but Walmart.  If we draw attention to ourselves we live in the protection of the group because they have noticed us.  To live a life unknown, unloved, and unnoticed is death (in a primordial sense) to that person.  We must be connected, noticed, and have a sense of belonging otherwise we suffer the consequences of the opposites to all that.

I need to be fair though in my thinking and I need to make clear to the reader that there are exceptions!  And in light of all of the above I see now just how exceptional. 

Martin Luther King, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Picasso, Shackelton, Mozart, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, and so many, many others.  They took the road less travelled, they made sacrifices, and they garnered little in their lifetimes.  Yet they left us such amazing treasures, they shared their vision with us, and moved in and out of compassion.

In a world of selfishness, self centered-ness, self loathing, self mutilating, self ingratiating, self healing and anything else that keeps us focused on the self, these people where driven to share themselves, their vision, and their hearts and many of them died lonely.

Now I need to consider these things.  I need to make a decision based on what I know to be true.  How deep does the water in my soul run?  Where do I want to go and how superficial can I be?

In retrospect I would like to thank these people for their example.  I would like to stand and applaud their spirit and I truly admire them, if not for their works, then for their courage.

Thank You