Don’t Box Me In! (Walt Whitman says)

I like things,
But I don’t collect them,
Drawn to people,
But I don’t select them,
Don’t have a kind, a style, a type,
Can’t describe me with a magnet swipe,
I’m curious, a blesséd curse,
Love to explore the broad diverse,
(As a side note: I am slightly awed,
When I meet a diverse broad)
But seriously,
Don’t try to peg me,
I beseech, cajole, I even beg thee,
With a world that’s daily more complex,
We insist on labelling with an “X”,
“X” marks the spot – so we can see,
The consumer type you seem to be,
Answer these questions, check these boxes,
So we know what your preferred stock is,
Well I reject that!
No, no, no!
Walt Whitman said it long ago,
Am I filled with contradiction?
Of course!
That’s what makes truth stranger than fiction,
Not narrow-minded, all that that exudes,
I am large, I contain multitudes!

3 thoughts on “Don’t Box Me In! (Walt Whitman says)”

Another brilliant piece! I can really identify with the ideas here. So many people want to pigeonhole us but there are so many aspects of each one of us that elude categorization.

Exactly so! People love to define and categorize. Everything from my family, who at various times have thought that I colected cows, clowns, and flamingos. Hell, I love Dylan and I don’t even collect him. It makes it easier for people though, then they don’t have to think.
The practice extends obviously in marketing, but all the way up through politics as well. We want our leaders simple and straightforward, no contradictions. People are so damned intellectually lazy sometimes. A contradiction is not hypocrisy, it is a sign of someone thinking through a subject, growing and maturing. Perhaps thinking one way at one point, but then developing and changing that outlook.
I would not and could not trust anyone who claims to have no regrets and have never contradicted themselves over the course of a lifetime.

Excellent point about politicians.

Human beings are complex, our minds are complex. Most of us can’t make up our minds what we want for breakfast in the morning, and yet we expect our leaders to have totally straight-forward, uncomplicated minds. We want them to endorse a certain political ideology and never ever deviate from it, never even entertain the idea of listening to the opposition has to say. We prefer “consistency” (read = stubborness) over intelligence.

We want them never to have committed a single illegal or immoral act in their entire lives, and we’re shocked, shocked! I tell you, when it’s revealed that they smoked pot in college, or from a recent example in Swedish news: get caught doing naughty things on the internet. For God’s sake human beings, real human beings, just aren’t like that. Why should we expect politicians to be any differet?