My Not-So-Special Brand of Crazy

I read it again. "You're not special."

So I typed back, "What do you mean?"

What followed was a sequence of dialogue that helped me and my friend understand each other better, and ourselves. She had heard those same words from someone else, and they had struck her the same way. And because either we are clinically insane and love internal pain and struggles, or we actually care about learning what it means to be healthy--like really healthy. Not just gym-healthy, but totally healthy.

What's important to remember here is before her three-worded pandora box, I was complaining. Whining, really. About all the crap that is required with this whole adult, healthy-functioning thing. Life is not easy. Work is hard. And internal work with a therapist is the equivalent of stabbing yourself with a hot poker--okay, that's a tad overdramatic. But it sucks.

I was whining.

She replies, "You're not special."  In other words--"you are not alone, you are not the only one suffering, hurting or wrestling. Your specific pain is not unusual or weird or unique. It is. And it sucks, and hurts. YES to all of that. And I am sorry you are hurting. But you are not special."

And you know what. She was right, and she still is.

It is even mroe unfortunate that we are immersed in a culture of a media onslaught (social media to commercials) telling us, yelling at us, screaming at us, "You are SO special."  Let us please stop feeding the monster--the monster of ME.

You know why? Because it's already hard enough to be told you're not special, to then listen to people insisting that you ARE special, when you know you're not. Deep down know, I mean.

I have a problem. I have giant, massive ego. I could blame it all on good reasons, but they don't matter. Now I know better, and know I am to do better.

That is all we can do is do our best, with what we know and the resources we have available to us. 

With God's help, I am not special. I am however deeply loved by God, and by other human beings in community.

We humans are all in this thing called being alive together.

And together, we can be something pretty special.