Especially special

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”

– Albert Einstein

“Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.”

– Jodie Foster

When the Golden State Killer was finally captured four years ago, it happened because he was utterly unique. Four decades after his first crime, he was finally caught, but not for any slip-up on his own part. They nailed him because of his nephew. Or his uncle. Or his cousin-twice-removed-from-his-mother’s side.

They got him because of his DNA. The thing that made him especially him.

Privacy discussions for another day, police were finally able to catch him because he was unique, but not completely so. The similarities in his long-saved DNA and that of his relatives who had signed up for DNA-informational sites eventually let law enforcement narrow him down from one of eight billion humans to one of a very few. The math from there was pretty straightforward. Unique, but not completely so. Unique, but very certainly not special.

That ends up being the feeling for most of us. We are unique in that we are singular, but we’re often left feeling like we are one of a million, not one in a million. Just one in eight thousand million. It can be deflating, but also a relief. We all deeply yearn to feel special, to be treated specially, and the mounds of self-help books and social media platforms available to us keep themselves in business making sure we feel as though we are.

Being treated specially, feel special, and told you are special. It’s a funny thing to aspire to when you see how those who actually have it tend to turn out.

The path to several careers of celebrity is littered with hundreds of flameouts and debacles along the way, and no moreso than that of sport. For every Peyton Manning that crosses our universe, there are a hundred Ryan Leafs. Players who were told they were the greatest thing ever, until they weren’t, and saw their lives melt down in some way because of it. And those are just the ones you hear about. There are thousands of athletes who make just enough noise in their youth to think they are a golden child, only to find themselves one of many at an AAU tourney or league tryout. And the ones who do fully “make it” are certainly no better in the a-hole department. You may want Michael Jordan on your pickup team, but do you want him at your kid’s birthday party?

And for every athlete you see in professional sports, they were often the finest player on their youth league, high school, and often collegiate teams. Being the top dog amongst everyone has an effect on any human being. The longer you’re told you’re special, the more likely you are to believe it. The more you believe it, the more you wonder why the normal rules should apply to you when they haven’t in so many other ways. We “normies” on the outside peer in enviously at the near-superhuman who almost does seem to be able to leap as high as a building, or run like the very wind. But our fascination has the double-edged slice of keeping that “special” person under a microscope and often feeling above us.

So we instead stare in wonder at the inane and insane behaviors sometimes displayed by young men and women who have spent their entire lives being treated as if a deity actually did reach down and especially touch them. Who wouldn’t feel special? Who wouldn’t feel a touch (or two) above?

At least many actors come to their fame at a stage in their lives when they have had a childhood and possibly young adulthood of some normalcy. When you see the rate at which child actors flame out in their later years, you see the cost of telling someone how incredible they are their entire lives.

In sports, nearly every athlete competing at the highest levels has been made to feel the effects of that pedestal since their youngest days. That separation. That sense of other. Many handle it with grace, dignity, and alacrity. So many more do not. Is it any wonder they don’t handle their business perfectly in front of us all?

Especially unique. Especially special. Something to aspire to? Be careful what you wish for.

The idea of being famous is a lot better than the reality.

– Tom Felton