geenuhjayy
Cause baby girl's a queen.
Ramblings, hopefully with a purpose.
When I lived in Alabama, there was this woman named Ms. Austin. Ms. Austin was the mayor of the thriving metropolis called Killen and also a bus driver. She was very proud of these positions, but her favorite job was being a substitute at our high school. She was famous for sending students to get her cartons of milk and regaling students with fantasies of a new sidewalk to be built through Killen.. the whole 2-3 blocks of it. But Ms. Austin was most famous for her “speeches”, if you can call them that. Everyone at Brooks High School knew her speeches. Her favorite was referred to as “the fingerprint speech”. She’d hold up her index finger and say something like “Kids… this is your identity. No one on earth has this. You are unique. Remember that.”
Now, we all laughed at Ms. Austin for implying that our entire self is contained in the tip of our index finger, but she was merely restating an age-old cliché… only you are truly you.
No offense to Ms. Austin and most of the civilized, supposedly enlightened world, but I’m going to have to slightly disagree.
Granted, no two people are exactly alike. That’s definitely true. Not even twins are completely identical. But I’ve found amidst my moves.. my sojourns in many states.. that I’ve met the same set of people over and over and over again. Nearly everyone I meet reminds me of So-and-so from South Carolina or Whatsherface from Virginia. I always think, “Wow, I wonder if she knows there’s someone exactly like her 5 hours from here.” It’s kind of a depressing thought, isn’t it? Everyone says they live by the mantra “be yourself” but I’ve found that there are generally only so many different people, each with slight variations to make them just a little different from the others of the same original mold.
Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but don’t worry…I’m not fully convinced that everyone is like someone else. There are a rare few that you’ll meet in your lifetime who are unlike anyone else you’ve ever even imagined to exist. In Zorah Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God the heroin believes that each human in existence was once a ball of shining, bouncing, glittering stuff that was covered over by mud because the angels were jealous of its light. She believed that each little mud ball lived searching for the other little mud balls. These rare few… these true originals… I picture them as little mud balls, ordinary dirt covering something wonderful, searching for others yearning to shine with them.
I think that we all start out as little balls of shine. As we grow, we get covered over with the dirt of this world, trying to conform and fit in somewhere among the other little mud balls. But some of us, we begin to shake the dirt off as we mature. We shine. We live. We are unique.
I know that my previous English teacher is reading this, overjoyed that I used a reference from a novel we read in class, and that I applied it to my own life. I think it’s important that we look for wisdom in everything we do, see, encounter. Our acquired wisdom is part of what makes us different from all the other little mud balls.
The wisdom I’d like to share with you today: Shake off the mud around you. Don’t let me meet you twice!
-Geenuhjay@yahoo.com
Now, we all laughed at Ms. Austin for implying that our entire self is contained in the tip of our index finger, but she was merely restating an age-old cliché… only you are truly you.
No offense to Ms. Austin and most of the civilized, supposedly enlightened world, but I’m going to have to slightly disagree.
Granted, no two people are exactly alike. That’s definitely true. Not even twins are completely identical. But I’ve found amidst my moves.. my sojourns in many states.. that I’ve met the same set of people over and over and over again. Nearly everyone I meet reminds me of So-and-so from South Carolina or Whatsherface from Virginia. I always think, “Wow, I wonder if she knows there’s someone exactly like her 5 hours from here.” It’s kind of a depressing thought, isn’t it? Everyone says they live by the mantra “be yourself” but I’ve found that there are generally only so many different people, each with slight variations to make them just a little different from the others of the same original mold.
Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but don’t worry…I’m not fully convinced that everyone is like someone else. There are a rare few that you’ll meet in your lifetime who are unlike anyone else you’ve ever even imagined to exist. In Zorah Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God the heroin believes that each human in existence was once a ball of shining, bouncing, glittering stuff that was covered over by mud because the angels were jealous of its light. She believed that each little mud ball lived searching for the other little mud balls. These rare few… these true originals… I picture them as little mud balls, ordinary dirt covering something wonderful, searching for others yearning to shine with them.
I think that we all start out as little balls of shine. As we grow, we get covered over with the dirt of this world, trying to conform and fit in somewhere among the other little mud balls. But some of us, we begin to shake the dirt off as we mature. We shine. We live. We are unique.
I know that my previous English teacher is reading this, overjoyed that I used a reference from a novel we read in class, and that I applied it to my own life. I think it’s important that we look for wisdom in everything we do, see, encounter. Our acquired wisdom is part of what makes us different from all the other little mud balls.
The wisdom I’d like to share with you today: Shake off the mud around you. Don’t let me meet you twice!
-Geenuhjay@yahoo.com
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