Five decades of “we,” of indoctrinating us in the behavior of the shelter or the squad, and yet in the park this morning a young man said, “What I want is to have my little piece.” He said it as if he were confessing a sin or coveting something at a great distance to satisfy an evil desire for which he would be publicly scorned. As he spoke of his “ambitions,” he gestured with his hands as if bringing invisible dreams toward his body, dreams that he named: “a roof,” “a decent salary,” “permission to travel.”
Collectivization has not erased in us that human longing to have our own piece, and forced egalitarianism has only fueled the desire to differentiate ourselves.
