Sugar is an awesome natural manna that my father applied to corn flakes like Sherman Williams base coat.  My dog feels it is a food group and there are jars of colored candies in my house rivaling the best stained glass in church.  Sugar takes happiness, pure satisfaction, and a little health value over  the top.

However, as with anything really great, someone says it can’t be good for you so a thousand scientists get together and try to make something that is almost as good and they package it – but it never is.   When you have the right stuff second best is never good enough – there is no equal (yellow, pink or blue packet be damned).

What really makes something equal anyway?  Is it in age? Brother or sister, son or daughter in a family? Being paid for the same job as another person? Same race? Intelligence level?  This is where a thousand scientists need to come up with an answer, it would change mankind.  Sometimes like it or not, there is just not an equal.  Birthright doesn’t give it; what you offer forth should determine it and common sense should be the vote breaker, not political or emotional intimidation.  Seriously, so sure we can’t determine an equal on our own, we have glass ceilings, middle child syndrome, don’t ask don’t tell and affirmative action, that was always a winner – not.

A favorite quote I heard years ago from Will Rogers was, ‘We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”  Truly, it can not be said any better.  I gave three children life and from there they were on their own journey.  It was not up to me to decide who they were, and good thing; because they made sure I knew they were each as individual and unique as snowflakes in a blizzard.

Equality for equality’s sake in a family should be child abuse.  Children need to see the individuality they have and who they are both good and bad depending on the way the wind blows.  Loving them so they know it, bonds us together, but frankly making them automatic equals is an insult, taking away who they are in the plan of life.

Life is a journey of unpredictable landscape and experience that we all take in, react to and share in ways that are important to us.  We share this with a higher power and grow from it defining who we become.   Rainbows are not white for a reason; newborn babies are not mass produced for the same reason.  Equality to learn and grow is a gift, but to be judged that way is a disservice, taking away any reason to develop further, grow or learn.  What awaits us at the end of life is the only equality we should know, and that is death, for it will take us all – equally.

Sugar is not equal to bran, just as one intellect will inevitably be superior to another.  So instead of putting so much effort into everything on a level playing field, let’s celebrate the cream rising to the top and make more of an effort to get there ourselves, being “one of a kind” at the end of life is so much better and leaves a legacy, because being “just one of the guys” only leaves a footnote.