On being the kind of person that I am...

I shudder when I look at the body of people around me. So many of them are one-dimensional; homogenous; generic. They do the same things every weekend. They wear the same clothes and always eat the same foods, they always sit at tables with the exact same set of people. Blindly, they accept what is fed to them; I think half of them still pretend to be religious by going to the mosque once a week. Sheep. Followers. Lemmings. Afraid to be anything other than the norm.

Maybe they're content with that and I have no right to criticize. But still, I pity them. I see them all over the city, always with the exact same expression frozen onto their faces.

The girls titter at bad jokes and are afraid to take a bus to the city by themselves. The boys call obnoxious slang to each other as evidence of their machismo, and hide under superficial conversation topics.

Don't these people ever do anything different? Don't they ever read, other than just for work? Don't they ever run, other than just to diet or "beef up"? Doesn't everything ever strike them as feeling good, so that they don't have to resort to catty elitism?

These are the people I've worked with all my life--tired adults who watch television every evening when they come home, and do nothing else.

Tired adults who schlep off to jobs in rush hour traffic, the monotony mind-numbing, so that after a few years feeling isn't even required.

When I look around and try to figure out who I am, I know that I didn't take any cues from these people. They are everything that I am not.

Maybe that explains why I'm finally reaching a point in my life where I can be happy--at least I know what I don't want. What I don't want is to be one of them. And I'm not, definitely not, thank God.