We all simply wander around the world in some odd form or another struggling with what we want to show our fellow humans. We all act as vessels needing to fill and be filled by each other – as conduits – craving contact and discourse with one another. Yet most often, we safely hide behind that gray iron mask which conveniently shields us from lies and truth and from light and darkness.

While our environs help define these fragile facades, whatever we may choose to hide or expose, most of us still quietly aspire from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment and from discomfort to ease.

Though we may feel isolated at times, our most intimate and base functions are the ties that paradoxically and inextricably bind us together as humans. We share a universal commonness often overshadowed by opinion, class and politics.

Battered as we may be, lied to and manipulated as we so often are, the indomitable, spiritual, creative, ingenious human spirit still prevails. We sing, we make art, we dance, we work and we perpetuate our species. We endeavor to rise above the grayness. We struggle and we persevere. We come up against demons within and we battle those without. We clumsily clamor toward truth and we protest. But mostly, all we merely seek, is acceptance.