I want to talk about something I touched on in my previous article, the concept of no one being unique. Let's start by saying that we are all different, yes. We as people do different things and behave differently from each other but when you look at something and say, 'Wow, that's unique' what does that mean? It means you look at that object of interest and recognize it as something you've never seen anything like.
The average everyday person cannot be unique based solely on statistics. Now, why talk about such a depressing and pessimistic point of view? In my mind, it is not pessimistic. I merely observe a flaw in the logic of 'uniqueness'. If everyone is unique, then by sheer definition, no one can be. Yes, we are all different and that should be celebrated, rather than attempting to shove everyone in a vaguely similar mold while they are small and malleable. I think this goes along with the fairly new concept of 'participation trophies'.
Unfortunately, while this may fix the problem of hurt feelings in the moment, it does not address the long lasting damage this can cause. To (loosely) quote my favorite comedian, Christopher Titus (who I will quote quite often) "They'll never know what they're actually good at if we tell them they're good at everything." When I was in 8th grade, I tried out for the volleyball team. I practiced long and hard before tryouts, but I had one disadvantage. Being 5'1.5" now, I can't imagine how short I was then. So I made the team, but I almost never played. Plenty of girls tried out and shy of one or two, all of us made it onto the team but only a cycle of about 8 ever played.
This concept of everyone being accepted to the team seems like a good idea but it hurt more to have to watch every practice and every game and know that I would never play. I later found out that volleyball simply wasn't my sport and that's how life is. You'll have jocks, you'll have the smart kids, the artistic kids, and some people are even destined to not do anything with their life. That’s okay, it's all okay. It's okay to be different but its also okay to be the same as others. I believe the concept of 'participation trophies' is detrimental to rising youth that are involved in it. It means kids think they don't have to work as hard to be acknowledged or praised. It means they'll think that they are special and unique without having to do anything, just merely existing makes them special.
I want future generations to continue to work hard and to acknowledge, no, I'm not unique but I can be different only if I work to make myself different. Rather than encouraging everyone to play football or take that art class and then giving everyone gold stars for trying, perhaps a better way to help boost self esteem is to promote everyone finding their passion and give them gold stars for doing well at their passion. I think this philosophy, if you can even call it that, of mine is best applied to children but adults should try it as well. Don't try new things because you are told to try them, try them because you want to.
