When you\u2019re young,
you look for something to worship,
you find a uniform,
adopt an identity,
become a noun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then you rebel;
you resent not having your own identity,
you are suicidally disgusted with yourself
for exuberantly accepting a generic mystique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And when you finally try to be unique,
most of your energy is spent criticising others
because it is easier to define what you are not
than what you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually you grow tired of identity jockeying,
and realize there is nothing to be gained
from judging anything other than your own progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you regret a lifetime of misspent energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you\u2019re young,
\nyou look for something to worship,
\nyou find a uniform,
\nadopt an identity,
\nbecome a noun.<\/p>\n
Then you rebel;
\nyou resent not having your own identity,
\nyou are suicidally disgusted with yourself
\nfor exuberantly accepting a generic mystique.<\/p>\n
And when you finally try to be unique,
\nmost of your energy is spent criticising others
\nbecause it is easier to define what you are not
\nthan what you are.<\/p>\n
Eventually you grow tired of identity jockeying,
\nand realize there is nothing to be gained
\nfrom judging anything other than your own progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-10156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poems","tag-poetry"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Identity-600x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Identity-600x600.png","author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/author\/craig\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10187,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10156\/revisions\/10187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craighordlow.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}