The Modest Miracle

          These days, so much emphasis is placed on celebrating individual uniqueness that conformity itself has become the unique thing.   Amid the clatter of all of us marching to the beat of our own drums, the few coordinated rhythms among us really stand out.   It's easy to think of a conforming person as a blind follower, or someone who us unwilling to think for themselves, but there are reasons why you might sometimes want to opt for uniformity over miscellany even when you could choose to blaze your own trail.   The purpose of this article is to suggest a few. Conformity Brings Organization           Have you ever played volleyball or tennis with people who don't really know what they're doing?   I have (not that I'm particularly good at either myself).   Often the games devolve into "jungle ball" sessions where no one cares how many times the ball bounces or how many times you have to hit it to get it over the net.   The idea seems t

Let me ask you something:   When was the last time you experienced something that was truly indescribable?  By indescribable, I don't mean something that's extraordinarily intense but that you could honestly sketch out in words if you really had to.   I mean something that is somehow beyond words completely, beyond literary devices, beyond what you could ever define in exact terms. I have a theory about that. You see, when we were children, we literally didn't have the words to describe our experiences.   We weren't that great at expression, so a lot of times we just didn't bother, or we only ventured out far enough to outline the basics of what we were feeling. Wasn't there a magic in the air, sometimes, during those moments?   And then in school we learned to think about the world in a whole new way.   Instead of just living life, now we actually had to think about it.   There was a name for everything, from the way light shatters into colors w