When you meet someone, and they tell you about their dreams, you hear with an understanding unlike any other. But then, you meet a thousand people, and they tell you about their dreams, and slowly, you start to notice how everyone wants only one thing: something different. And yet, they do the same things as one another; not an ounce of their life has any difference. It is disappointing. You see the potential of difference as clear as day, but most people live the same way. No amount of time spent with the average person would uncover any quirks or mannerisms because they are absent. As if some burnishing of the soul had rubbed away all their individuality over the years, leaving people with no edges, no identity—only smooth repetitions of the same person with vague dreams.
The fear of being specific made sure nothing would be different. Most people wanted different, but if you asked them, “in what way?” they had no answer. And if you asked them, “would you trade your whole life away?” they refused. It is not something different that people want. It is something of their choosing, but they are not ready to face what it is and what it would cost to get it. Even if they were ready, knowing what you wanted was a study unlike any other. You had to sit with yourself and ask, “but why?” for every desire until you reached a point where the answer was silence.
Everyone wanted the same things because every personality was smoothed out to the extent that all they could do was reflect what they saw. It is the dirty individuality of the dreamers that helps them achieve impossibilities. To be eccentric was to know who you were, to have a rebellion in you like no other, to have a surface so coarse, no one could polish it out of you. It was only then that you knew what you wanted. All else was empty talk with a drink in your hand and the burden of unfulfilled dreams on your shoulders.
To want different, you had to live differently, and even if you did not get what you wanted, you could at least be proud to have tried. All dissatisfaction was a response to having your identity rubbed off you, and the everlasting guilt of letting it happen.