“Some days the world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.”

Do you know the feeling? You are the extra wide tie when everyone else has gone narrow, the three piece suit when everyone else heard that it was to be casual, the only one who didn't weep during E.T.

Is it too much to simply find a place, to be like others, to, chameleon-like, blend with the landscape?

So Ernest Becker sees humanity caught between the tension to, on the one hand, make something out of ourselves, to “stick out,” be somebody and, on the other hand, to avoid isolation, go with the flow, find our place of security within the crowd, whereby we might attach our fragile egos to something greater than ourselves. So we join clubs, wear neckties, put stickers on our bumpers, membership cards in our wallets.

Wh…