Greater than or Equal

Do you realize how hard it is to define the meaning of a word, that’s supposed to make you feel unique, a cut better than the rest, different in a good way, that gives you the kind of confidence which allows you to walk upright with a smile, that just gives you a natural glow no matter where you are, that lights up a room when you enter, a meaning that people seemed to have lost along the way, or has simply been watered down by a society built on independence, democracy, freedom and equality? Yes, I’m sure you can imagine the difficulty I’ve had in defining the fine line that separates the entire balance of society from being average or being special.

When we’re young, perhaps even infants, each of our parents take one look at us, and take a moment to stare and perhaps even disappear in a world lost in their imaginations, where they can paint beautiful pictures of great expectations, hopes, dreams, career options and endless possibilities, taking a moment to lose themselves entirely in a moment hoped for in time, taking a moment to immerse themselves in a lifeless thought, trapped in a time that hasn’t even existed yet, saying to themselves that against all odds, in a world cold and callous to the thought of you, that you and you alone, your individual self, curled up in the love of a parent-figure, that you...are special. And yet somehow, at some point the thought begins to rub off, either by subliminal messaging, or by the constant droning and propagated by the influence of our parents and those who look up to us, down upon us, inspired by us, or hope never to be like us, somehow the thought of you being special sinks in somewhere, causing us to believe that perhaps...just maybe...there’s something unique about who we are, thinking to ourselves...yes...I’m special.

But eventually we realize, that the fine line that divided the great from the not so great begins to blur, and the solid veil that once separated the mighty from the fallen begins to fade, and in the disfigured shadows and silhouettes of what once was the slightly imperfect idol of greatness...being special...is torn down and left to wither away by the gale forces of society’s wind of change, the gauntlet of communism and the gavel of capitalism, the mighty scales of equality weighing down the trees of success we nurtured our entire lives, cutting off its wealthy supply of egoism and selfishness, teaching us the ideologies and concepts of a level plain...yes, the concept of equality brings down our soaring skyscrapers of conceit, as if to pose a challenge to breach the limitations set upon us by society and ourselves. So the question remains...what makes us special, especially living in a society that says we’re all equal? Is equality just another way of forcing humility down our throats, or is it there to challenge us to be better than ourselves?