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I'm self conscious
I'm beginning to think that I might actually be just like everybody else. No better. No worse.
And that, in theory... ...is a good thing.
Right?
I mean given that the amount of time I have devoted throughout my life to the asymptotic dream of reaching the ever elusive mirage of normalcy is second only to the amount of time I've devoted to trying to be exceptional, unique, and peerless... this revelation should come with some degree of relief!
...Right?
But therein, I suppose, lies the perennial problem. Do I get to be Normal?
See: not-weird, one-of-the-group, an insider.
Also, see: ordinary, average, mediocre, insignificant.
Or do I get to be Exceptional?
See: noteworthy, extraordinary, outstanding.
See, also: abnormal, odd, atypical.
You see my conundrum here?
So really, I guess I should say that I'm beginning to believe that I might actually be just like everybody else...
No worse. But no better. Either.
And that, embarrassingly enough, is terrifying to me.
I mean, as I sit with it, I'd almost prefer to be worse... rather than just unnotable...
Worse is at least worth noting. Abhorrent at least gets a footnote. What's that phrase?
There's no such thing as bad press.
What is that?
I mean, without getting too Freudian here, I suppose it really all does seem to come back to two competing human needs within me:
The need to belong. To fit in. To be accepted. To feel affirmed and welcomed by those around me.
And the drive to be seen as something Someone Remarkable
Which, through the principle of philosophical mathematical reduction, might just as easily become the need to be memorable. Remembered
Which, reduced down one more eye-rolling ideological integer, might become, quite simply, the fear of death. Of not being. Of not existing.
Of never having existed if, in fact, the present moment is all we have.
So then back to this realization that perhaps I am just like everybody else.
No better or worse. Nor worse. Nor better.
I mean, it's certainly in alignment with my values, at least as I understand them and profess them to the world... a lot:
The power inherent in the framework of heterarchical paradigms focused on the adaptive nature of diversity in all its myriad forms is that it helps us all to feel our inherent value. Our inherent uniqueness within the context of us all being just... People. Being. Each of us has something to offer that no one else could possibly offer because no one else embodies the absolutely unlikely and completely unrepeatable combination of quintillions of factors that have resulted in this divinely negentropic manifestation of being that each of us, ultimately, is.
No better. No worse. No more nor less miraculous.
My first thought at this point, tangled up as I find myself deep within the morass of all this philosophical pilpul, is that none of this really much matters at the proverbial end of the day, because ultimately, from the Taoist as well as my own experiential point of view... I simply seem to be who and what I am.
With room for growth and change and healing and hurting, but nevertheless... in undeniable, ever constant adherence to my own true, deep, unique, Inner Nature.
Which I seem to discover the exact nature of, more and more, the longer I play this wild, ever inventively, unexpectedly dynamic Game of Life.
And whether that results in a life remembered by millions... or simply by those around me whose lives I impact in positive negative and every spectral way in between.
I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that, if only in the rippling effects of my impact, if not necessarily by name... I will be here even when I'm gone: in the grand cascade of the ever unfolding moment.
Each of us, it seems to me, is a mosaic made up of the millions of interactions that have shaped us, each of which were influenced by the millions of interactions preceding them, resulting in a sort of tapestry of personhood stitched together by the impact of each of us on eachother, sewn up one micro relational experience at a time.
So, From that perspective... I suppose the best thing I can do is to simply be me. As well as I can. Every day. In all my many ordinary, extraordinary, weird, banal, bizarre, predictable, shlubbish ways...
Just like everyone else.
I don't know...
What do you think?
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