I’m not special. I know what you just thought as you read that. Wait a minute, isn’t this blog about optimism? Well, yes, it is and believe it or not, the fact that I can finally admit that I’m not special is a step in the right direction. Accepting my own normality frees me from grandiose expectations and allows me to finally be happy by accepting who I really am.
Remember way back when we were all young? For some of us that isn’t so long ago, but for me it is half a lifetime. When I was young I can remember being told by everyone in my life, “You can do anything you want to do”. “You might be the first woman President. You might cure cancer. You might author world peace.” I’m not sure if I was more trusting or gullible, but I ate those words up like candy. Like candy, they became a part of me. I accepted that those were legitimate expectations and that unless I managed to pull off something spectacular with my life that I was letting others down and was in fact a failure.
I’m not sure how parents and teachers are supposed to inspire children without also feeding them false hope. I mean how motivated would have I have been in algebra if my teacher had said, “You will only use this when there is a super bargain at the grocery store and you are buying for the entire month”. No, telling me that algebra is important to anyone working in NASA was far more motivating. I never saw myself walking in space, but I knew that astronauts were important and I was destined to be important, so I could wind up at NASA, therefore I’d better learn algebra. By the end of the second year I was fairly certain NASA would not be knocking on my door, but there were other important careers out there like doctors, lawyers, politicians, research scientists and movie stars. Why must unrealistic expectations be dangled to motivate students? Why isn’t a normal life acceptable motivation in this country? Maybe it is and I just missed the point growing up, but for whatever reason the prison of unrealistic expectations has been my home for far too many years.
I think it was on my fortieth birthday when I started wising up. I was staring at myself in the mirror thinking “Not that many more shopping days before Christmas, what are you going to be when you grow up?” and then seeing a few wrinkles I realized that I was grown up and had been for years. My life wasn’t going to be some magical time travel miracle that never ended. One day my life would end and spending my time waiting for some magical special career to find me was a waste. I already had a good life, a normal life, but I treated it at times like a way station. It was my first life, the place where I was waiting for my real destiny to find me, but looking back even I couldn’t make that kind of thinking sound sane. It was crazy talk. Now I accept my life and realize that it’s a good one. Perfect, no, but I gave up perfect years ago. Perfect tells me that nothing and no one is enough. Yeah, perfection is an illusion that the world created to keep us all heads down and working harder. I reject perfection, it is the prison located next door to unrealistic expectations.
So, the lights are now on and I’m seeing life in a new way. I’m accepting that it’s okay that I’m working part-time at a job that I love while going back to school in midlife. It’s okay that I have twenty pounds to lose and that wrinkle creams don’t work. It’s okay that I have a degree I don’t want and never plan on using. I selected that career out of fear and by default. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, so I picked something that I knew, something familiar, a safety net, but honesty at this point in time I think I would only use it if there were no other options. It’s okay that I’m not going to have my name on a plaque or fly to the moon. It’s okay that people don’t know me out in public or call me to see what I might be able to do to fix health care or the education system. It’s okay that I don’t know how to end wars or save our planet. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m enough. Happiness triumphs titles and salaries scales.
Happiness comes from accepting who I am and where I fit into the puzzle. I’m not that center piece what makes it all make sense. I’m a small piece slightly inside the edge somewhere up in the sky or clouds. I’m happy with that. That’s my place and I have two choices I can embrace it and be happy or reject it and spend the rest of my life grieving the fact that I’m not a bigger piece. Wow, easy answer for me. I want to live and be happy everyday that I have.
I’m not sure exactly where all of my unrealistic expectations came from, but like a virus they are contagious. I’ve spread them around to others with a comment here or there. “You can do anything”, “You should be president of the company”, “You are smarter than everyone else”, “You know more than they do”, “No one sees the world like you do”, “Things would be better if you were charge”, “They are just jealous of how special you are”, “You are the best and the brightest”, and so on. This is the breeding ground for false selves. I know because I grew up creating a mask I’ve lived behind for years.
These false masks that we create tell us that we are too special or not special enough to fit into the rest of the world. We can’t be ourselves so we have to be other people. That’s a lie. These masks are created out of the imbalance of who we know we are and who we think that others want us to be. They aren’t helpful. Just like the ones we slipped over our faces on Halloween, they obscure our vision. We can’t see where we need to go and so we stumble along and have a much harder time finding the right path.
I’m not special. I’m not going to walk on the moon or save your life. I can knit a warm scarf and bake some comforting cookies, but no one is going to line up to buy one of my designs or to eat one of my meals. I’m normal. I’m the person you pass in the grocery aisle and never think of again, but that doesn’t make me less. I have worth. Not because anyone else tells me so, but because I say so. Living a normal life ain’t so tragic. In fact, it’s pretty terrific!
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