The Circus

I've continued to think quite a bit about the issue of identity (see my earlier post) and the things to which we look for validation. As I said before, we are voracious scavengers of sources for validation, and any particular person will search for any available platform onto which he can climb and claim superiority (even if subtly). The thought reminds me of Donald Miller's collection of essays called, "Searching for God Knows What," in which he recounts a story about a circus sideshow. He described a group of deformed and rare individuals who comprised the "freak show," and what I discovered as I read his telling story was that in this group of people, what gave them validation was being the "biggest freak." I read about a world that was inverted relative to my own, a world in which i would have been lowest on the totem pole because of my "normalness." Were I a person with a third arm and only one leg, I might have been given some due status. But as I am, I would be a nobody were I part of this group.

Doesn't this say something about us? That we'll use anything, be it a good education, a higher income, better looks, or a third arm in order to climb the social latter in front of us?

Maybe we should give up climbing.