A Message To My Friends And Freaks

There are some blogs that are very fulfilling to write and this will be one. I'm not writing this one for web hits or page views. I'm writing it because there are a few people out there who need to read it.

I guess when I was a kid somebody called me a "freak". I don't remember the particular incident but I can tell you that it scarred me. Still to the day, if someone says it to me in the wrong tone of voice, I'm done with that person for a few weeks if not forever. I have to say I was VERY wrong about this, the world needs freaks and it is something we should be proud of.

Please keep this in mind- IF YOU ARE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, THEN YOUR LIFE IS POINTLESS. I say this knowing you are NOT like everybody else. and that you don't fit in. The world doesn't need automatons. The world needs weirdos and people who ask odd questions and think strange thoughts. It needs people who second guess the status quo and are provocative. There's a jokey old saying that "if nothing else you can at least be a bad example" and even that is true.  In this and many other college towns you'll see that clean cut kid wearing white shorts, a button up shirt and a ball cap. Sorry, but that kid is destined to be a cog in the machine. It's that weird kid that will break the machine or redesign the machine. From Einstein to Hawking to whatever crazy ass hippie invented the bong, these people were freaks and they changed the world.

Take pride in your weird collections, offbeat t.v. shows and fascinations that nobody but you can understand. Keep asking "why should I?" and "what if?".  Play in your costumes and listen to some really weird music every once in a while. Take pride in the fact that there is not one person on this earth that could take your place, that you're a special kind of weird and that it's only the strange, but strong flowers that break through the concrete.

So you and I have a mission going forward. The next time someone calls us weird or says we're a freak, we need to take that as the highest compliment possible, a shiny but strange badge of courage and intellect that we can use as proof that our life was not wasted.

The line "IF YOU ARE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, THEN YOUR LIFE IS POINTLESS" was inspired by this motivational speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you have a moment, this is tremendously motivational and only the small minded would think it's only applicable to sports.