Why are we so obsessed with being special?
Looking deeply at exceptionalism and remembering that we're all extraordinary
Contemplations
What if we were all born worthy, from a place of goodness?
How would that perspective change the way you move through life?
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I got this fortune the other day and haven’t been able to stop staring at it. Well, tbh, the fortune cookie was on our countertop for weeks and my wife finally ate it after it went stale and left the fortune behind. (Though she said she actually left it for me and didn’t just discard it. She said/she said, I guess.)
I don’t blame her. I’m sure we all have much to say about the silly but sometimes deep nature of the messages in a fortune cookie. Growing up in a family where mysticism was embraced, cultivated even (but don’t try to tell my mom she’s superstitious!), I’ve always been very open to messages that don’t have any scientific or concrete explanation.
The truth is that this way of rationalizing truth through evidence is a very Western way of thinking. (And many Eastern faiths have been robbed of its magic through “sanitization” by taking out the ritual parts to make these practices more palatable for a Western audience.) If you take a hard look at when people say something is “woo-woo,” it’s really indicative of something that is metaphysical that can’t be explained. But the reality is that this is the fine line between science and spirituality and even the most renown scientists know we are often talking about the same things — consciousness, cycles of nature, biology, physics, SPACE — but just through different perspectives. (Even Einstein self-identified as “devoutly religious”.)
But back to my fortune cookie!
I’ve been staring at it for days, and getting angry at it, specifically at this concept of being “extraordinary.” The sheer fact that this simple fortune is uplifting this idea that we have to work harder to be special shows how ingrained the idea of exceptionalism is in our culture and consciousness.
Exceptionalism is the perception or belief that a species, country, society, institution, movement, individual, or time period is "exceptional" (i.e., unusual or extraordinary). The term carries the implication, whether or not specified, that the referent is superior in some way.
The concept of exceptionalism was born from 18th-century German philosophers Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte who founded the term to move away from describing a nation based on its governing body but more so by their people. Which I guess on paper was a good thought.
But exceptionalism has created a huge amount of competition for nations across the globe, with so many claiming they were AWESOME! Of course, this has also created not just separateness but also a sense of superiority IE it intellectually reinforced the brutality and violence we were seeing from colonialism — which means inherently we see the Western (more recently American) perspective as THE right view of the world. And anything that doesn’t fall within that scope is, well, woo-woo. And centuries of superiority i.e. supremacist violence and oppression, has been masked to be a crusade for the superior race (white), religion (Judeo-Christian) and systems of government (democracy).
Not to Be All Buddhist About It, But..
Of course, I have a lot of feelings on this topic personally but one of the most valuable and core teachings of Buddhism is knowing we are all dependent on each other. We are inherently interdependent — and if you want to dig deeper, we are so inherently interdependent that we are actually not separate at all. This is what we call emptiness. This is what Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh means when he says we “inter-are.”
Again, the laws of nature prove this point out as well. It is the understanding that I am you and you are me. And there’s actually no separation, much less any sense of superiority. But of course, these concepts and narratives are created when power is at play and at stake.
For me, one teaching that I always come back to and has transformed me the most (and is one of the main themes of my book) is the teaching behind Buddha-Nature.
Buddha-nature is the capacity for enlightenment and freedom present in every being, a fundamental core of goodness, wisdom, and compassion that is hidden by clouds of ignorance—so hidden in fact that we might never even suspect its presence. It is like the sun that continues to shine regardless of the clouds that may cover it. By clearing away those clouds of greed, anger, and selfishness we uncover a state of perfection that is, and always has been, our own true nature.
— From the Buddha-Nature project, a Tsadra Foundation Initiative
This idea that we all START from a place of goodness, wisdom and compassion is radical to me. I mean really think about that for second — think about how many narratives we are fed constantly every day about how you’re not good enough and are trying to contort you into something you’re not, just so you can feel some sense of worthiness.
But what if we were worthy to begin with? What if we had nothing to prove? What if no one was ordinary because we were all extraordinary?
What an idea. What a reframe.
I think about how much time I’ve wasted in my life working towards being extraordinary when I know now that the work was realizing that essence, that Buddha-nature, that goodness was always there to begin with.
And the practice is coming back to that understanding, that coming home.
Now that’s the kind of fortune I want to get.