Special: better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.

(From Oxford Languages)

As I child, I was fed this steady diet of being told I was special. In the end, I found it confusing, because I didn’t feel special.

As a teen, I read Max Lucado’s “You Are Special.” It’s a story of a Wemmick named Punchinello, singled out by his creator and told of his great potential and how he wasn’t like the other Wemmicks who cared so much about the judgments and opinions of others. All those other Wemmick felt, well, pathetic to focus so highly on what others thought–the good traits they were admired for or the bad traits for which they were looked down upon. No, Punchinello was better. He was above that. Unlike the other pathetic Wemmicks, he was “special.”

I loved that book and wanted it for my kids. Surely, it told me, I was special. Of course, my children were also special. They weren’t going to be a pathetic Wemmick. I wanted them to be a special Wemmick.

As I grew in childhood, I wondered and constantly looked for ways that I was “special,” the ways I stood out from others. How was I better or greater than the people around me? Ultimately, I was left at a loss.

I was tested for the “gifted program” in elementary school.

Turned out, I wasn’t “gifted.”

Whatever that meant. Perhaps I learned specific things through a specific method being used, more quickly than others. But, nope, that wasn’t where I was special.

It’s laughable now, but at the time, it didn’t feel great to discover that I was not gifted. It was a determination that unconsciously hung over my head for years.

I was just below special. Some of my friends were “gifted” and enrolled in AP classes and I came to accept that perhaps I was above average (they had tested me for being gifted after all), but I did not reach the level of “special,” at least not in academics.

I pursued so many activities. Maybe in one of the activities, I would find out that I was special–that I was better than everyone else. Somewhere I would be singled out for my talent or goodness or something. Surely there was something that made me special. Sometimes I was.

I would get a compliment and be over the moon. Perhaps that was an indication of why I was special.

Turned out though, in everything I pursued, I was more-or-less the same as everyone else. There were people better and worse than me, and times I was better or worse than others.

I was nothing more than average.

Accepting I wasn’t special felt defeating.

I was told one thing. My experience proved another and in the end, it felt like something was wrong with me.

Well, it turns out that I wasn’t special with something being wrong with me either. I was again, just average.

For some reason, in our culture today, we don’t want to be average. We don’t want our children to be average. Most people crave feeling special, being singled out like little Punchinello. We need to feel that in some way we are better, superior, or greater than everyone else. We want our children to be better, superior, to really excel above everyone else.

Nothing feels better than a first until we move to the next level, or time passes and we are no longer first. We are no longer special–once again just average, like we always were.

There is a yearning because if we are superior or better, if we can do something no one else can, then we are worthy. And for better or worse, many adults seek this sense of worthiness by pushing their children and seeing their children excel. When we find we are not special, we hope, perhaps our children are. Then we are certainly special by association.

But what if we never find that thing that makes us “special.”

Here’s the problem with believing we should be special in some way, or that our children are in some way special. We will ultimately find it simply isn’t true. Our children are just children like the 2 billion other children in the world today. When we discover the lie our life has been guided by, the belief from which we have pushed ourselves or our children, we are likely to feel devastated.

Conversely, if accept that we aren’t special, our children aren’t special, there is nothing special about our life. That we carry a plethora of traits incredibly similar to millions of people who have come before us and millions who will come after, then we can begin to flourish.

Read here about imposter syndrome. A concept making waves right now as people enter professions where they feel seen as special despite not feeling special.

When you realize you are still unique, capable, and worthy, you can accept your pure self.

It is only when you accept who you are with all your strengths and weaknesses, all your averageness, that you can move forward with acceptance. Until then you will always try to be someone or something else. To reach that level of specialness.

Excelling in something feels great–for a time. And then you stop excelling. Someone is better than you. You have to start focusing on other things. Life moves on. If you have been defined by the one aspect you excelled at, you will lose yourself. You will no longer know who you are.

Just read here and here about what happens to many athletes after the Olympics. They even have a name for the emotional crash–Post-Olympic Depression. Suddenly, these athletes are no longer special, when they have dedicated their entire lives for this very purpose. Crowds are no longer yelling encouragement. The world is no longer talking about them. They are once again, just average people, living an average life.

There is nothing special about you.

You are average, just like me.

Your kids aren’t special. They are average, just like mine. But, they are still wonderful, amazing, unique, and brimming with potential and so are you.

The idea of being special promotes a fixed mindset–or the idea that there is an intrinsic characteristic of our being that makes us better than others. When it is not there, when we fail–we give up. We crash. If we realize we are just one more person with potential, we understand that growth is not just possible, but the only true way forward.

How does it change your approach to life, if you realize that all these people who are seen as special–Oprah Winfrey, Kobe Bryant, Robert Downey Jr., Jane Austen (this list could go on and on)–are just average people? They too are just like you and me. Look what average, run-of-the-mill people have accomplished.

If average people have notable achievements, so can you.

You do not need to be well-known or admired by others, and if you are, it still doesn’t make you special. There are lots of people well-known and admired by others.

Psychotherapist Lauren Grunebaum developed anorexia as a young adult in her bid to live up to the diet of specialness she had been fed her whole life. It simply is not a healthy mentality to believe there must be something that makes you special.

But, if we understand we are average, with growth potential, just like everyone else–then we can begin to find ourselves, our purpose in life, and embrace our quirks and weirdness instead of trying to be a unicorn in a pasture full of horses just like us. When we believe we can grow and improve, then we will begin embracing ourselves, not to be better than others, but to be better than who we were yesterday.

It is a life-changing perspective.

You can also feel special in a bad way.

You can feel you have been specially targeted for trauma, loss, or debilitating problems. Sometimes we feel special by how bad our life is.

Understanding you are not special in the trials of life, that innumerable other individuals have walked a harrowing path much like your own, it makes the mountains simply a part of life instead of something we have been unfairly gifted. You are no more special in your struggles and hardships than in your triumphs.

We are all simply average humans living the human experience.

You are capable and worthy. You are no better and no worse than the world of humans you are surrounded by. But, the thing with all humans is that we have incredible potential and astounding resiliency.

You have a creator who cares no more, and no less about you than every other human being, but cares about you nonetheless.

You have beautiful things ahead, hard things ahead. There are amazing discoveries, triumphs, and goodness ahead and devastating challenges and setbacks.

You are worthy, good, and enough, specifically because you are not special.