I am not a unique and special snowflake... and neither are you

Disclaimer: I've been away from LJ for about a week and I haven't had a chance to look at my Friends' List yet. Any resemblance to people living or dead, or situations current or past, is purely coincidence. It's all about me, after all.

Context: I'm coming back to LJ after a week away, so I checked out readers_list* first, because I'm a slut for good writing. I read the new posts, then got to this one and remembered something I've been meaning to write since I first read it in February. This desire was further compounded by an article in Saturday's "Globe and Mail" about Generation Me.

Princess time: I've been away from LJ doing self-indulgent things like getting Russ to make me extra fancy breakfasts, receiving gifts from people, going out for huge rich meals (with dessert), and spending birthday money from Grandma. For a week, I was the birthday princess. Now I'm ready to go back to Real Life...

Real Life is where I am not a princess. I'm important to some people, but I'm not objectively important. Anything I do well, someone else does even better. Anything I am suffering through, someone else has suffered through worse. Any list of adjectives and labels I can use to describe myself could probably also be used to describe someone else in this world. It isn't that I am not a unique and special person, but that everyone else is too. "If everyone's special, no one is."**

I have more than a little self-obsession. Of course my problems seem more important than anyone else's – they are mine. In that, I am perfectly average.

Sometimes when I'm writing a rant for LJ about a stupid or mean or ignorant customer, co-worker, family member, friend, acquaintance, or stranger on the street, I wonder what they would write in their journal about me or about the situation. Sometimes that means that I don't post the rant.

I do feel better when I listen to someone else's problems and can make them feel better, even in just a little way. But sometimes when someone wants to talk about their problems, I want to back away so I can keep thinking just about myself. This is probably perfectly average too.

I have a motto – a kick in my own ass when I get too self-involved – that I try to follow:

Stop whining that no one understands you and try understanding someone else instead.

In the "Globe and Mail" article, the writer uses blogging as an example of self-involvement, and that certainly can be true if each person dwells only on their own life and point of view. But blogging can also be a way of seeing that so many of us are facing the same kinds of problems, and that we are all celebrating and hurting in turn. My pain isn't bigger than yours, nor even that much different. We are both people who are sometimes in pain. And my successes aren't greater than yours, and you want me to cheer you on when you win just like I want to be celebrated when I win.

In the readers_list post, cadhla wrote: Because you're amazing. And you deserve to know it. In my opinion, life does have inherent value, and so does every person on this earth. Everyone is a little different from everyone else alive, present, past, and future.*** But being born and having unique DNA and fingerprints isn't an accomplishment.

I am only as special as I make someone else feel.

I am only amazing when I make the world better in some way.

And so is everyone else.

*If you don't read readers_list, go add it to your Friends' List. Go ahead now; this post will still be here when you get back.

**Wisdom from The Incredibles. If you haven't seen the movie, go see it. Don't worry, this post will still be here when you get back.

***Barring cloning, of course.