What’s Your Position?

The craving of each human
To be special constitutes
Evolution’s cruelest gift

To selfhood, past awareness
Of death. And of course it works.
That’s how it got selected.

Every healthy human’s born
A pure, role-seeking missile.
What can you be to this group?

What will be your specialty?
How will you make your small self
Valuable enough the rest

Will compete to protect you—
Or at least tolerate you?
Some are born into plum roles

But still seek to distinguish
Their own existence through them.
Some are born into horrors

In which being special means
Being the one who grows up
At all. But the strategy

Remains—if you can manage
To make some others believe
You are of unique value,

You have a chance to succeed.
You have to want it badly
Enough to suffer for it.

A grizzly bear’s not special.
It needs to succeed as bear,
The common bear ways, that’s all.

But you. You must be special.
Crave specific roles to claim,
The common human craving.