Myself a Statistic

I am just another statistic. Another set of numbers, another piece of data. I am simply another unknown in a computer that knows everything about me.

In school they say my name, but that is all they know. I am one more student out of a few thousand this year and thousands upon thousands more throughout the school's history. They do not understand how I think or how I speak, or what I do. I am a part of this or that, I take this class or that class. Those bits of information could turn me into something more, but those classes and clubs too, have turned to numbers.

In my choir I am a little closer to being the human I am supposed to be. Here I am a voice. But I am one voice out of seventy every rehearsal, and one out of hundreds every performance. I will be forgotten once I am gone as those before me were forgotten. I will be again turned to numbers in the computer sitting in the office.

With my doctor, I am supposed to be the most human. He knows everything about me, and deals with human illnesses, not numbers. But I am written in computer charts. He only knows me because the numbers tell him what he knows. My diagnostics become data in the nation-wide system, and I eventually become part of a statistic that will soon be forgotten, saved for the day it is needed, which will never come.

Someday I will work. The day that happens will be the day my humanity is gone completely and only data exists. My boss will see me as another tool to work towards his goal, and his boss in turn will see him the same way. I will be a part of a company like all the others with a hierarchy that is the same hopeless ladder of power. I will clock in when I am told and my time will be converted to data. The work I do will also become another archived piece of useless information.

The words I compose here too are simply numbers. They are zeros and ones running through the machine sitting beside my feet. I am one of over 150 million blogs spread into the far corners of the internet. Even here where I bear my soul to the world, I am nothing more than a statistic.