You're Nothing Special

Eric Wilson - 2012

As we close the year it will be time for New Year’s resolutions and promises and reflections. You are about to face another year with disappointment with successes and with setbacks.  Most likely left to its own this will be like most other years – nothing special. 

I could tell you about opportunity, commitment, and desire but you most likely have heard them or could even recite the mantras.  I could tell how special this year will be but that would be a lie as well. Ultimately it is not the year, plans, or New Year’s resolution – it is the person.  

There was a wonderful commencement speech given by David McCullough Jr. back on June 1, 2012 at Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.  He was an English teacher at the school and provided an “outside the box” but genuine speech to those young bowls of mush in front of him.  Here is an excerpt from the address:

“Each of you is dressed, you'll notice, exactly the same.  And your diploma, but for your name, exactly the same.  All of this is as it should be because none of you is special.  You're not special.  You're not exceptional.  Contrary to what your U-9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mr. Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you, you are nothing special.”

His message was you are not one-in-a-million and even if you were, that on a planet of 6.8

billion inhabitants would mean there are about 7,000 people exactly like you.  McCullough went on and finished his speech with – “Exercise free will and creative independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others – the rest of the 6.8 billion and those who will follow them.  And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.  The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you're not special, because everyone is.”

McCullough was strongly criticized by many in the media for telling these students that despite what a purple dinosaur or some weird guy asking to be their neighbor with a wacky sweater might be telling them, they are just like everyone else.  More importantly, nobody is special because

- Everyone is different.

- Everybody has different talents.

- Everybody has different levels of ambition.

This does not contradict McCullough’s message, but what has been taught and generally accepted in our society does.  We have been told that we are special and can achieve anything, but then placed on a conveyor belt system that trains us to be just like everyone else.  We are encouraged to excel, but then “dumb down” all the rules or expectations so that everyone can be a winner.  We have been conditioned to absorb and regurgitate facts.  We say we want leaders and then punish them for success while rewarding followers who just “do their job.”

What we end up with – not surprisingly – is a “citizenry factory” outputting the next generation of the status quo and even more mediocrity.

That is (in my opinion) the point McCullough was trying to make, and one which I hope to convey here as well.  There is nothing special about me and there is nothing special about you, but we can rise up and become special.

That is not asking much, either.  In a world of average and mediocre, the bar is not that high.  You don’t have to be some “amazing” person or the next Steve Jobs or U.S. President.  You do not have to be some brilliant and innovative person or do impossible things.  No, truly “in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.”  The reality is you need only rise slightly above the norm, and you will stand out.

Drop a few drops of red wine onto a white table cloth and it sticks out like a sore thumb.  The stain gets noticed and changes the status quo.  Not only does it instantly change things, but it displaces what was previously there.

You don’t need to be great this year…only better.