The pain, the excruciating hot, poker-iron pain pierced Jimmy's side. He was lost in the forest without food and water. They had given him what seemed like simple instructions. "Go to college, get a good job with benefits, keep your head down and don't make waves." He entered the forest at one of the firebreak roads. The sign said Cubicle Farms just ahead. Looking back, he should have been concerned when the firebreak road disappeared in the forest's undergrowth - on the very first day.
Jimmy entered Cubicle Farms at Hamster Wheel Alley. Fifteen years and four sets of carpet later, he was still trapped inside the forest. The forest and its dwellers homogenized his life. His initial issue of horse-blinders, latex gloves and rubber pencils stood the journey of time. The forest dwellers applied a steady drip of corner and edge rounding to all of the citizens of Cubicle Farms.
Comparing his plight one day to that of Viktor Frankl, Jimmy remembered some long-ago advice from his brother Denny. "Be proud of who you really are. Be proud to fly your Freak Flag!" Later that day Jimmy ran from Cubicle Farms into the Forest.
In an insightful essay* on freeing our creativity titled "Fly Your Freak Flag", author Ellen Rohr explains the title's roots.
"In the movie, "the Family Stone," Sarah Jessica Parker plays an uptight lawyer. Luke Wilson plays her soon-to-be brother-in-law and lover. Luke's character is trying to get Sarah's character to lighten up. He tells her, "You have a freak flag. You just don't fly it."
Can you think of anything more liberating than climbing up Pork Chop Hill, climbing up, over and on the backs of the Forest Dwellers if you have to, but reaching the summit and driving your freak flag into the peak and proudly proclaiming, "this is who I am!" Personally, I am not so demonstrative. But I wouldn't mind getting a suction cup for my freak flag and sticking that baby right on top of my company issued soccer-mom-mobile.
Purple haze all in my brain. Lately things just don't seem the same. Actin funny, but I don't know why. Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
*Unfortunately there is no link to Ellen's essay.
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