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ATELIER LMNO
I Gotta Be Me
The lack of originality in human consciousness is distressingly appalling and surprisingly comforting
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I like to think of myself as special — just the same as everyone else. I hate knowing I’m not wonderfully and exceptionally unique. It’s so ordinary and pedestrian to be just another civilian. It’s like an ant standing up in the middle of the colony and belting out, “I Gotta Be Me!”
All the other ants are like, “Ugh, whatever Francis. Get a grip, dude.”
There is some comfort, I suppose, in knowing that we’re all in this together. Even though we spend a tremendous amount of time in our heads, arguing with ourselves over the petty minutia of life, we’re all thinking pretty much the same things most of the time. All of our hangups and insecurities are the same hangups and insecurities everyone else deals with.
In the Albert Brooks movie, “Defending Your Life,” the entire premise of existential reality is that everyone on earth is driven by fear. Despite it just being a movie, and a comedy at that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue otherwise. Fear is what drives us, whether we like to admit it or not.
