Does anyone else find it as strange as I do that people like Lady Gaga and Bob Dylan stand up as examples of individualism, and preach about being yourself, et cetera (Gaga more so), while exerting a fairly conscious and contrived effort to be anything but themselves? It's come to my attention that we live in a society where we admire individualism and self as a construct, a world that stresses not just being yourself, but the active creation of the You you want to be.
I swear, I'm not trying to preach anything, or assert any well-formed ideas; I'm just trying to get your braingears moving.
That was pretty much the genesis of the new piece I just put up on FiveByFiveHundred.com, about a boy who longs to grow up and be himself, and the trials he faces along the way.