A thought on sameness

Byline: Adam Kozman, Opinion Editor

Sameness is the lack of variety; simply uniformity. I think uniformity in daily life takes away what it is that makes life worth living. I’m talking about daily life, the things that are happening outside your front door.

We live in Buffalo, N.Y. just as people live in San Francisco, Calif. and Sandusky, Ohio. We don’t have any stunning mountains or glaciers, expansive prairies or water rushing off of bright beaches. We just don’t have that. As for what we have, you can go a couple blocks in one direction and find houses with fountains and fancy cars behind nice gates. In another direction, there’s a string of houses painted pink and pleasant, other ones with double decker porches and people hanging out on both levels. People waiting in a line around the corner for a local donut shop and cars clogging intersections from a Tim Hortons drive–thru.

Variety is waiting at every corner, and I really think there is something charming in that. People may come here and see a couple sharing a smoke on the bench outside their apartment buildings on a winter morning, and think; what are they doing? But they are doing exactly what you are doing. They just happen to be in a different place. If you are where they are then you might be doing something similar. There is value in that difference.

If you were a kid at the corner of West Ferry and Barton, you might be sitting in a circle on the sidewalk with your friends and their tipped over scooters looking at Pokemon cards. That’s just what they do. If you were to live a ways up on that same road you might just be someone who lives in a large residence with a broad stoop and turret. No one end is a better place, people just do what they do where they are.

If everything is the same, with cookie cutter houses, manicured lawns and 2.5 kids, how can someone see the beauty in behavior? I wouldn’t be able to see three kids packed on a scooter riding across the street to get a soda from the gas station, or people listening to “Pet Sounds” while tossing a line in the Scajaquada Creek to reel in a fish for the sake of catching a fish. It’s in those things that people are participating in the act of being themselves, not so much as going on their morning commute to work or looking at their computer.