cookie cutters.

I really don't like cookie cutters. Really. Don't. Like. I'm not talking about the little plastic or metal shapey things that produce perfectly formed identical Christmas cookies. Although, come to think of it, I don't like them either... who wants a perfectly shaped cookie?

No, what I'm talking about is a cookie cutter lifestyle. That's what I hate.

I really have disdain for cookie cutter houses that all look the same. I once lived in a lovely townhome... It had a nice patio and skylights and a big window in the front. It was charming... but completely unoriginal. In fact, my neighbors to the right and left had the very same townhome with the same patio and the same skylight and the same big window. And come to think of it, so did the neighbors behind and in front and all around for several blocks. Yuck. Why? Why did some contractor come in and decide that he should put up 100 identical townhomes? Because it was easier? More convenient?

I don't like easy and I don't like convenient. And I don't like unoriginal.

I like old things that have a story. They are usually marred in some way, but they are unique. I like my house. It's old and creaky, but it has character and I don't know one other person who lives in a house just like mine. I don't know anyone else with the neat cracked stained glass window or the big wood sliding door. Someone, sometime built that house and made it unique. They didn't put up a hundred more like it in the surrounding blocks. I like that.

Maybe I've always had this bent... As a kid, if everyone had a red toy, I probably would have wanted a blue one. I got irked when friends copied anything that I did, and wondered why they couldn't come up with something that was original. I have never been a follower. I was the one that was followed... and for some reason I spent more time trying to figure out why than I did accepting the fact.

Cookie cutter goes beyond houses and clothes and cars though. It's the people that are cookie cutter on the inside that really make me wonder. It's like no one ever told them that they could have a personality. Somehow, they missed something along the way, and they ended up just like everybody else. A cookie cutter person with a cookie cutter view of reality. They never challenge things and they never push themselves. They take the easiest job they can find and then they settle back and watch life go by. They are inevitably depending on someone else for support, either monetary or emotional. Whether it's the government, their parents, spouse, or friends... they will always be needy.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think that any man is an island and that we should all be independent of one another... Obviously not. It's just, I wonder, why are there people out there who simply can't seem to find themselves. They get lost in this cookie cutter world we live in, and they aren't strong enough or individual enough or smart enough to see beyond it.

I don't like cookie cutters. I like things that are made by hand... rough, authentic, imperfect, deep, real, unique, original... works of art. Worthy of looking at. Worthy of discussing. I want a life like that. I want to be a person like that... and I want the details of my life to mirror that. I don't ever want to strive for the cookie cutter perfection that this world tells us all we need, because really, what is the point? Cookie cutters are boring, unoriginal, dull, disinteresting, shallow, fake... replications of something real.