Breaking Bones

This generation is all about disparity, creating a rift between us and the next guy. We're not interested in being the same. We value what's different, and we weigh our value in the distance that separates each person. Yet there isn't any difference. There isn't any unique quality that sets us apart. She moved to the city to get away, thought maybe she was too good for that rural town and its primitive ways. She thought traipsing through the metropolitan streets in her stiletto heels would increase her significance. Staring up at those skyscrapers that seem to go on forever, and observing the unceasing bustle of the streets, life just seems more important here. Yet the sameness can be found inside the buildings, inside its countless rooms, where cocoons and shells are laid out for each man. A businessman bites his fingernails for a paycheck, another trades his youth for wrinkles to meet a deadline, and each returns home to an empty apartment. Maybe one has a wife waiting and he knows she's not the one, and another will sip whiskey to forget he's alone. What makes these men so different from the ones that plow the fields or lay foundations? They wake each morning, and grind through the workday with the same ferocity and the same hopelessness. What difference does it make if one holds a pen or a shovel? Superiority is an ugly thing because it is imagined and implemented by those too afraid to accept life as simple or equal. If you strip away the little details and flourishes that we adorn ourselves with to feel more special, and slice through the top layer of our superficiality, you'll find bones , hard and resolute. This skeleton refuses to shift with our whimsical concepts, but remains to bind us all together, to remind us of our equality.