t@lk prëtty

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Fleet Foxes, particularly their latest album, Helplessness Blues.  I haven’t been able to get the first stanza of the title track out of my head.

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes,                                    unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

At first I thought it was a bit sad. I mean, we do kind of have this idea banged into heads (at least in Western culture) that unique equals special. That to be different is good because being like everybody else is boring uncreative. But really- how useful is that advice? Am I really all that unique? Even if I am, what does it matter?

I think maybe I would prefer to be that water molecule that creates a huge wave. Because, let’s face it- by ourselves we are nothing. Literally. With no around there would be no way to confirm individual existence. But together, together we can do something great. And maybe that’s the message we should be pounding into little kids’ heads these days. Not that everyone’s different, but that there’s something that connects us all together. Under the skin and hair and religious and political ideology there’s the same human spirit in all of us.