I think Snowflakes are the Problem.

I remember hearing the quote about snowflakes, you know the one that says they look the same far away, but up close they are all different. This made us all want to embrace our uniqueness like the beautiful, majestc, glistening, flake of weather we are.

I remember loving this quote back in the day, as I felt like such an outcast as a kid.

But, now looking back at it and at the current state of peopling I am afraid that in trying to teach kids feeling outcasted that they too were so special -we forget to reiterate that they are still part of a larger pile of snow that looks the same as we shovel it into a muddy pile on the side of our driveways.

It’s always the case in the world. We have done something wrong in one way by trying to do something right, because balance is tricky and this is just life, but I also wonder who is in charge of screaming the warning, as this story still gets told in such a positive light.

Now, as a kid, I have to tell you I felt best in my house when my oldest cousin was around cause that mofo was weird, and I loved his weird, and loved being weird with him. He was the first member in my merry band of outcasts in my own mind.  As an old lady, I can now see that my Mom was the first one in that band; she was just being a double agent in the other world and not telling me.

This got me thinking that I already loved my own world, in my safe space, playing video games, chucking parts of my furniture at my cousin’s head, and watching him make art.

Our family is also kind of like, the accept and bear most of it kind, so everyone talked somewhere about the eldest nephew in a family of Portuguese immigrants who was into art, dolls, and most likely gay, but no one was kicking him out of the family. In our own little world, everyone’s weirdness was accepted as far as my tiny little girl’s mind could tell. I felt like a well blended snow flake in my band of merry outcasts.

This gave me the delusion to forget that my snowflake could not just blend with my comfort zones. It had to blend with places I did not want to be. Unwelcoming places. Places I felt it might be better to have melted into water and been drunk by a duck, and be carried off to some other place.

It made me think I could just choose where my snowflake might blend.

This is where everyone is now. Love the unique variety of themselves, yet still only want to blend with like snowflakes.

We group together in outcasts, and elite.

Maybe the story should have gone that after the snowflake saw she had her own individual pattern, she felt like she did not need to compare herself to the snowflake next to her. She felt excited to see every snowflake’s individual pattern and not feel threatened that when they merged together, her own matter would no longer matter. Maybe it should have gone on to tell us that once the snowflake was no longer afraid to be a wee bit different, she would enter a whole new world called the water cycle and live on forever and ever.

Amen.