”Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” – Margaret Mead  

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. “ -Albert Camus

Many people people struggle with which of these they truly want to be.  Are you one of them who isn’t always sure whether you prefer to be ordinary or want to be special?  I think most of us are both.  We are human and in that way, we are “ordinary.”   It isn’t healthy or forgiving to hold ourselves to such high standards so that we berate ourselves for feeling very human fears and other emotions.  Yet we are special too, because we are us and not somebody else.

I won’t be making any judgments about which state of being or self-perception is superior and which is inferior.  I will just share some thoughts and hope my sharing makes you ponder the topic.  Perhaps you will examine what you think and feel about each of these labels.

Ordinary means common, but also means “normal”.  Special means unique, superior, unusual, different, distinct or perhaps, “not normal”.  We have different perspectives than others about exactly what we define as normal.

As a teen and young adult, I cultivated a certain mystique about myself. I convinced myself first, and then some others, that I was unusual enough to be superior in my uniqueness.  As I moved from being a skinny, mousy, shy, nervous girl with stringy hair, to a teen who suddenly got a lot of notice for various reasons, I tried to leave behind my insecurities by adopting an image as a quirky artiste.  I disparaged the books and music my peers enjoyed, buried myself in complex Russian novels and the tomes of philosophers.  I dressed “my own way”, sometimes sporting pajama tops as blouses, and jeans (which were absolutely not standard attire in those days) and sometimes wearing tight dresses and high heels to school.  I bought my first denim skirt and also some overalls at a general store in Vermont on a pre-college visit there and wore them everywhere, much to the chagrin of my teachers and my mother.   I formed a circle of friends outside of my school, of people who were much older and who were mostly artists and writers.  I disdained a lot of the kids in my high school.  Some of them have contacted me in recent years and have turned out to be lovely people I wish I had known better back then.

My disdain didn’t stop me from doing silly things to attract their attention.  One antic involved carrying around small vials of colored glitter in my pocket and sprinkling it on anyone I thought was too serious and needed a little levity and a “blessing” from me…Pretty obnoxious, huh?   This was in the pre-hippy era before I actually moved to San Francisco.  I had long, serious conversations with my teachers, enjoying the attention from them, eliciting respect from some of my peers and the contempt of others.  I thought all of this made me special.  I stood out, even in a very large New York City school and I liked it just fine most of the time.  I felt that being ordinary was not for me.

Of course, many kids long to be accepted and to be just like their peers during at least one phase of growing up.  Others rail against this and find their peers who follow each other blindly to be shallow and unappealing.   Some of their resistance to being followers may just be a defensive mechanism, because they have been unable to find a social place where they are accepted and fit.  This defensiveness may, in the end, be what drives them to succeed.  Overcoming obstacles can groom us and push us toward success.   A famous success story is that of Michael Jordan, who was cut from the high school basketball team.  They didn’t want him and didn’t think he was good enough.  We know the rest of his story.

What is ordinary and what is special shifts with the times and according to the culture.  Years go, when my adult kids were in school, there were special education classes for kids who were emotionally, mentally or physically challenged.  We were encouraged to refer to kids and adults with disabilities as “special needs individuals”. This was the politically correct phrases of the day.  Nowadays, however, kids with special needs are not separated from the rest of the student population in most systems in the US and inclusion is the operative buzz word and the politically correct approach for the education of children who have learning, physical or behavioral challenges.  Regardless of the reality that these kids do indeed have certain special needs, the approach is to make them feel as much like “everybody else” as possible.

The desire to stand out from the crowd or to blend in with it may not be consistent throughout our lives.  When I was in early elementary school, after a serious auto accident and missing a great deal of school, my parents hovered over me and made me feel that I was fragile.  Although my doctors had assured us all that I was able to resume regular activities, my parents did not agree.  As a parent, I now understand how terrified they must have been when they nearly lost me, but I hated being singled out at that age.  Each day, rain, snow or sunshine, my mother walked me to school which was some distance from our home.  She made the same walk at lunchtime and sat with me in the school auditorium while I ate my bagged lunch.  I wasn’t permitted to play with the other children after lunch as my classmates did.  I begged to be allowed to run and play, but was told it was not a good idea yet.  I begged my mother to stop visiting me at lunchtime. She finally did.

As an adult I had an interesting lesson about what special was and wasn’t.   I was at the beach with some friends and our young kids. One friend had brought along her sister who was cognitively challenged, lived in a group home at the time and worked at a sheltered workshop. My husband had recently lost his job and I commented to the group that if he did not get one soon, I would begin looking for any kind of a job I could find, even if it meant working at a nearby factory on an assembly line.  My friend’s sister looked horrified and exclaimed, “Oh no, Iris, you shouldn’t do that. You are a special person and you would find it so boring.  I’m retarded and I hated working in a factory.  I was so bored.  I don’t want you to be bored.”  I was astonished and thanked her for the advice, knowing that she was right and that I probably would not have had much tolerance for that type of work.

At first her response surprised me, but when I thought about it, it made perfect sense.  Though she may have had intellectual limitations, she was part of a very unique family.  Her mother was an artist who had always marched to her own drumbeat and the sibling I knew, my good friend, was a very creative, perceptive, independent thinker. There was always animated conversation and debate in their home.  A. was her own person, capable of thinking things out in her own manner and of having feelings and opinions.  In this way the sister with an intellectual disability was the same as everyone, but also was special, in that she had qualities of individuality that had to do with more than her mental capacity.

As someone who has lived to survive the death of   a young husband, and of many others beloved to me, I remember my shock when a friend said to someone in my presence, ”if you need anyone to show you how to mourn (as though there were only one acceptable way) go to Iris. She is a “professional mourner”.  I think she was trying to pay me a compliment, as well as to point out a resource for the other woman who had recently lost a close relative.  Her words hit me in the gut really hard.  It is very true that I am proud of being a survivor and of the ways in which I have been able to use the insight and skills I acquired through my experience with loss of different types. However, when she made the comment, I wanted so much to disappear, to be ordinary and to be without this odd distinction.

How about you?

Self-Reflection:

·          Are you more comfortable with one label than with another?

·         What is your personal definition of each of these?

·         Do you think most people are 100% one or 100% the other?

·         Have there been times in your life when you have perceived of yourself differently than you do now?

·         What were the conditions or factors that influenced this?

·         Did your self-perceptions have to do with what others thought about you?

·         If you asked 5 others who know you in different contexts (work, family, school, clubs, etc.) which of these labels do you think they would believe is most fitting for you?

·         What makes you see others as special or as ordinary?

·         What do you think might occur if you went out of your way to find qualities in other people that were the opposite of how you originally viewed them?