In the last few weeks I have heard and read a lot of opinion about being unique and developing your own style and blablahedybla. Well, it’s not that easy to be unique. Even people’s faces aren’t that unique. The human gene pool is very shallow. What all this individuality fuss is really about is ego: the desire to be different, to be better than others. It is a Sesame Street world: everybody has been told that they are special, so they are special dammit. Special and unique. Their art has to be unique, their words have to be special. This phenomenon of unique is nothing but an American marketing fad: USP: Unique Selling Point. Everybody agonizes over it, and the irony is even this agony isn’t unique! Whatever you do, someone else is doing it too, or has already done it. Well, how unique can it really be? You have two eyes, two ears, two hands. You feel the same set of emotions, just a different mix, at a different time and place. Perhaps, then, instead of obsessing over uniqueness, focus on beauty. So what if it is not unique? There can be two beautiful and similar things, can there be not? Or three? Or four? Or hundred! There are billions of stars in the sky. All twinkling points of light, visually (and physically) not that unique. Do we complain, Oh all the stars look the same, how boring? It is that tapestry that makes it beautiful. Does your beloved complain that the dozen roses in the bouquet you got her are almost identical?

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Contribute a verse. Contribute your verse. Your verse may not be unique. It may not stand out. Don’t worry if it doesn’t. It’s not a solo recital. It’s a choir. And your verse, or voice, is still required.

O Me! O Life!

BY WALT WHITMAN
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.