Paintball

We are all born different. It is the cruel dogma of nature that from the moment that sparked your life into existence, you are hurtling towards an inevitable quietus. And the pitiful window, from which you get to glance the mysteries and wonders of life, is slammed shut before you take a good look.

As a result of our simultaneous existence, there rises from the rubble, society, a double-edged sword with a jagged handle.

Through the process of evolution, the human species have been unique to one characteristic; imagination and its exploitation. Human beings have gathered for centuries, brough together by stories and beliefs, forming cultures and religions. A rather odd sight it would be to see a congregation of cockroaches engrossed in tales of whimsy.

The human imagines because the world isn't enough. And so the one trait that distinguished us from the rest, the one trait that united us, is on society's criminal list.

Society says that it isn't enough if you love a pursuit, you must pass through the machine to be part of it. Society demands this, turning a blind eye to the fact that we are rocks of different sizes and shapes; we can't all be processed the same. The machine breaks many precious rocks because they don't fit.

Let us assume most people are rocks. They are lifted by the education system and flung to their desired destinations. The rocks land where they want and are undisturbed by any obstacles thrown in their way. However, there is a small group of people who are not quite rocks. They are balloons, filled with flowing paints of vermillion, blue, violet, orange, silver and green. Emotions and poetry fill these people, like paint does the balloon, weighing them down.

It is a poet's fate to die in colorful paroxysms. And the ones that aren't shot down live long enough to turn into a depressing sludge of grey.