An Abundance of Ambers

Hello there, my lovely blog-reader(s)! Sorry I've neglected/procrastinated you. I plan to write several posts today and have them post on random days/times, due to the fact that I am probably leaving again. Anyways.....

For those of you who are made of AWESOME, the title of this post is indeed a play on John Green's wonderful book, An Abundance of Katherines. Amazingly, I have drawn a comparison between this post and John's book; they are both about being an individual, and standing out in a world of monotony. My friend Nicole (@MegginLovett) and I were talking last night, and she said 

" :D There should be more people like you in this cosmos."

To which I replied something along the lines of, "The world would be a much more quiet, nerdy, grammatical, appreciative place if everyone was like me." But then I really started thinking about what it would be like to have a world where everyone was like me, and I was like, "Holy crap, thank goodness that's not the case!"

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are afraid to be individuals, and they just go with the tides of others in order to fit in. I'm not the type of person to shop at Aeropostale or American Eagle just because everyone else is (unless I'm shopping for jeans. Their jeans are really nice). Not that there's anything wrong with those stores, I just don't need to be a walking billboard for them, with the store name across my chest. I wear what I want, in styles that I'm comfortable with. The majority of my wardrobe is from Kohls, because they are awesome, affordable, comfortable, and not just the same old skin-tight t-shirt with words all the time. If the world was just an Abundance of Ambers, Kohls would certainly do great business, but none of the other stores would. To make matters worse, we would all be dressed the same, therefore eliminating the individuality of that personal aspect.

Also, I am quite a shy person. Like, painfully, excruciatingly shy. I went to a Leadership Conference yesterday and the day before, and the teachers there literally shuttled me over to a table with students and made me talk because they were concerned. It's quite a miracle that I am able to convince myself to be so open with everyone here on this blog and on Twitter. If the whole world was full of painfully shy and awkward people, there would be few relationships, little communication, business meetings would be utter failures, and nothing would get done. The only good thing is, there would be no cliques. I hate cliques. They isolate people and create meaningless and inaccurate stereotypes, which I find detrimental and just plain irritating.

Finally, I love a mostly-empty, well stocked, comfortable library. I go at least once a week during the school year, and more so during the summer. However, if everyone loved libraries like I do, then there would be no books left on the shelves, the chairs would be worn and saggy, and whispered conversations and the buzzing of phones from Twitter notifications would dominate the atmosphere. The books would all be well treated and cared for, but it wouldn't really matter, because the waiting list for them would be ages long.

There are about a hundred reasons why a world of Amber-like personalities would be a bad thing, including a ton of skittish, sucky drivers; but my main point here is that the things that I love would be extremely overused, obsessed over, and worn out, and the things that I don't love would fall by the wayside. A balance of different varieties of people and personalities is important in a successful society, despite how nice it would be to completely understand one another. If we are all individuals in the same way, we aren't really individuals at all. We are just An Abundance of Boring.