It seems innocent enough:

Which Sex And The City character are you? Are you a Charlotte, a Miranda, a Samantha, or a Carrie? 

Which FRIENDS character are you most like? 

What’s your design style? Is it modern farmhouse, glitzy glam, hipster heaven, or traditional? 

Dress for your body type! Are you a pear, an upside-down triangle, a spongebob squarepants, or an hourglass?

These personality quizzes are a dime a dozen, and we take them with a grain of salt; meaningless, silly fun. That’s all they are.

We ascribe a bit more meaning to boxes that describe our social standing: jock, theatre nerd, Type A. We place ourselves in one of the two camps known as Extrovert and Introvert. We fit ourselves into the pre-existing archetypes of career: entrepreneur, starving artist, and so on.

So much of our lives and identities are informed by selecting from the (very limited) available options of Type.

What Type are you out of these three options? We ask ourselves or are asked by the world. Understanding that we have to be good sports about it and choose one, we’re content to choose or accept the option that most closely resembles us.

Only, the more we dissect the options, the more the available ones never seem to accurately characterize us. After all, we are some of this one, but also some of that.

We are equal parts Sex and the City characters. We have some of each facets of the typical body types. She likes theatre, but she also loves soccer. He is somewhere in between starving artist and entrepreneur. She is kind of Type A, but also never folds her laundry, and always runs late.

Some of this, but also some of that.

Which is another way of saying: neither, exactly.

We are so accustomed to living within pre-existing archetypes that it seems completely normal to attempt to assign ourselves to the one we reckon we are most like.

But nothing could be more limiting than to squeeze ourselves into boxes that were never capable of describing individuality, but rather of capturing the masses.

There is no point in trying to clarify what pre-existing element we are most like. There is no freedom that can come of assigning ourselves labels which dictate how we ought to react, spend our time, take our leisure, or make our livings.

The only real way we are alike is that none of us is exactly like the other.

You are not one of five available options. Your life does not have to follow one of three pre-existing courses.

You are here to leave your weird and majestic mark.

Write a new part.