Man Machines

The one and only thing I have really ever imagined myself doing is writing. From the moment I learned to write at the age of three, I started composing poems and stories. I seemed to be tapped into a limitless source of creation and inspiration. If you gave me a blank piece of paper and a writing assignment, you could be pretty sure that I would have filled it up with a relatively remarkable piece before other kids had figured out what was up or down on their pencil.                                                                          

Where did the joy of writing go, and why did the secure writer withdraw? The answer to these questions is that the joy and the writer herself got strangled by criticism, both from within and without. From the first writing assignment I had in first grade, all I got taught was that I needed to limit myself. I learned how to shove myself into an appropriate box of regulations, as opposed to discovering and playing with my natural talent within the field. Everything I wrote was deemed to be too long and inappropriate. The contents of the stories did not really matter. The fact that I could make up entire species on different planets and portray their existence meant nothing as long as I did not know how to curl the letters in the correct manner. In fact the content of the written assignments did not really matter, it was the form and structure of the letters, and how similar they were to the model letters that mattered. Get into the proper form and structure kids, that is what really matters, don’t mind the creative force screaming inside, we will gladly provide a suffocation bag to put an end to that distraction.                

Early on I learned that the school system was not designed to foster creativity and promote new ideas. No, instead it was a breeding facility designed to bring forth exact copies of the people who have successfully pushed our very existence towards the edge of destruction. Man machines. Conformity is the key to a comfortable existence. Well, if that is the case, then please bless me with some turbulence, universe dearest.