Standing in line at a coffee shop, I watch the barista take orders and talk to customers. Her hair is dyed electric yellow and she has her septum pierced. Her eyes are glossed over like she might be high. She is perfect to me, in this moment on a Saturday morning when everyone is still a little sleepy and waiting for their coffee. She is not really that attractive. In fact, she looks like a boy, round in the face, and dresses like one too, with a long-sleeve cotton button-up. Still, I wouldn’t take anyone else in the world in her place right now.

It makes me think about our standards for people. We require them to be sexually attractive or economically productive or otherwise useful to us in order to deem them worthy of our approval or admiration. I wonder what would happen without those standards. I wonder what would a human being turn out to be. If we could be whatever we wanted, err, not even “wanted,” because that want is subjected to those standards.

So what I really wonder is what a human would be if we could be whatever, whatever at all. For one generation, it would be a fantastic display of art. But then for the next, sexual selection would be all disordered and economic progress might stall and even violence might break out. So the price we pay for our safety, progress, and order is to select some people and not others. On the whole, everyone seems satisfied enough with this. As for me and a few others, I want to run around congratulating and complimenting and loving those others.