There is a reason you are here.
You feel it in your bones.
You look for it in family photographs where your history calls to you from the misty past. You see it in the faces of your children that appear as living visions of days gone by. This means something. Something important.
The experts don’t notice it. The politicians don’t talk about it. It’s never featured on the news. The wild stampede of social media drowns it out. There are no email campaigns to codify it. They all clamor for your oh-so-valuable attention, which leads to money and power for them. They will outright tell you that you don’t matter unless you join their urgent cause, right now, today! They are all exclamation marks.
“What are you waiting for?” they intone. “Be somebody! Mean something! Join us!”
But, deep down, you know that’s not the truth. Because that truth hides quietly inside you, whispering your name. You do matter! But not for the reasons they say.
There’s nobody like you. You know this because they tell you. When they talk, their opinions are not yours. They don’t like the food you like. They choose different colors. They like different songs. They read different books if they read at all.
And it seems urgent for you to be different, to have your own contrary opinion, to separate yourself from the crowd. Even if you say nothing. We naturally seem to choose something different from the crowd, even as we try to fit in. We are our own. Ourself.
It matters deeply, even if we don’t say it.
There is a reason.
You are different down to the sub-cellular, microscopic level of your DNA code, a unique serial number provided by your manufacturer, a whisper of who you are. But it actually goes even deeper.
I recently turned a corner and a crowd of people was coming down the hallway. I stepped back to let them pass and a striking college student with pale white skin, brick red lipstick, and collar-length red hair walked past without a mask. Highly illegal at my school, but the president and director of student services were behind her talking and laughing loudly, so I said nothing.
But then another girl walked by with the exact same shade of lipstick, skin, and hair. While my brain was still saying, “wait a minute”, another one followed her, all three dressed and coiffed calculatedly the same. Identical triplets in a building full of anonymous masks stood out like a marching band.
But anyone who knows twins or triplets knows that looks deceive.
These three people are not at all the same. Identical clothing and style is just a marketing strategy to prove that they are different from the rest of us. Their sameness is their uniqueness but their personalities are as separate as we are. Genetically the same, often sharing their own special language, multiples refuse to conform their inner identities.
Because they know. There is a reason. They feel it deep inside.
Never before has history produced anyone exactly like you. It’s as if some ultimately creative force exists that takes endless pleasure in our uniqueness. That amount of creativity is too big a force to ignore. Sooner or later, you would think things just have to fall into boring repetition.
We are so different, in fact, that we constantly strive to fit in, to be a part of a group, to not feel so alone. It’s as if there is something disturbing about being different. Like we might be missing out on something. Like we’re never sure that we are good enough and we have the suspicion that someone else is.
It’s disturbing to the point that we criticize anyone who dares to step outside the group norm. Cancel culture is just this feeling running free, in the open for all to see. Be the same as us! Different people are wrong and we are right. There is no male or female. There is no color or accent. It’s all just in your twisted mind. Conform or be banished!
But we are so different that it feels like a plan. Different is the norm, no matter how we try to fit in. It’s as if we are all made so different that we have to learn to get along. It’s as if love and tolerance with each other is the natural requirement, a law of nature built into our souls, the real lesson to be learned by our radical uniqueness.
It’s like someone is trying to tell us something.
We know there’s a reason. And until we admit it, nothing makes any sense. It’s all a fantastically complex machine with a missing part. It’s a plan without a planner.
Until we admit that God Is.
