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You Are Not So Special

I haven't written much lately and it's been because I've been thinking a lot but about things I didn't really want to share with the internet.  I have been thinking about possibility and self-limitation.  While definitely not the impetus, there's a You Are Not So Smart article about the Benjamin Franklin Effect in which you ask someone for a favor and it makes them like you even if they didn't before.  Like most things on You Are Not So Smart, it's about mental limitations, our own and others'. 

Which leads to a pre-revelation: I'm 30 and I'm still not really sure what I want to do with my life.  There's not revelatory because I'm not sure I've ever known what I want to do with my LIFE, but the big difference is that I used to feel like no matter what I actually did, not knowing made me a failure.  I mentally backed myself into a tiny little corner where the only options were what I'm doing (i.e. a life) or one path to a PhD and being qualified for exactly two jobs (i.e. a career).  But really there are so many options other than that, but for as long as I could remember I have been so focused on finding the right thing that I've never really thought about life as this thing that is MINE, something that can be anything I want.  My therapist and I decided that my next big step is to give myself time to think about this without coming to a conclusion and without having a panic attack.  (Seriously, I had a panic attack at breakfast the other day thinking about this.)

It took a divorce to teach me that relationships didn't have to be a certain way, and only now am I learning this about life as a whole.  I just never gave myself permission to think about it, and I don't know why.  And oddly enough, You Are Not So Smart is delightful and universal.  We are not so smart.  And we are not so special. 

Lots of people don't know what they want to do with their lives.  Lots of people are mixed up.  Lots of people choose something that isn't the pinnacle of everything.  Lots of people come from complicated families, screw up and have to learn from their mistakes, have parents that have died.  We are not so smart, and we are not so special. 

I'm really grateful to my parents for telling me every day as a kid that I was special, that I could do anything that I wanted, that I needed to do something important.  All that made me be better than I would be otherwise.  Unfortunately, it also made me feel like the only way to not fail was to be special and amazing every second of every day.  It's a big burden, and maybe I'm just not that special.  Maybe I don't want to be. 

Comments

Carl Johnson said…
:-/

Am I allowed to like your writing while disagreeing with your conclusion?
October 13, 2011 at 4:51 AM
Denise said…
Saying you like my writing is a big compliment, so thank you. I'm curious about what part of the conclusion you disagree with.
October 13, 2011 at 10:14 AM
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