You are special (but not that special)
I’m on a mailing list for a website that sends out inspirational stories every couple of weeks. People are invited to share an obstacle and a difficulty that they have overcome. There are lots of heart-wrenchers and stories of faith. They almost always end with the uplifting conclusion that rings with the sentiment… “and now it’s over and I’m better for it.” Once I got used to the tone and mailings, I pretty much quit reading them. They arrive, I assume that I know how the story is going to go, and then I delete, but one of these emails hooked me. In it, a man shares from his treasure trove of old letters written by and to his Great Aunt Milly. Milly corresponded with her relatives through the 1918 Flu pandemic and two of these letters are posted here, and here.
Now, 1918 seems like a long time ago. I have some romantic ideas about the time. I think about my grandparents’ early lives – a scene populated by family stories, black and white photos from dust albums and my own imagination. I have other ideas about the time — women had few career options and didn’t yet have the right to vote in the US. Life for LGBTQ people and people of color was encumbered with overwhelming injustice. I let myself believe that life then was so different than life now. And if I follow that line of thinking without challenging it, I can feel an assumption taking hold that that human life now is special and different than it has ever been before.
These letters turn that belief on its head. The fears, uncertainty, losses and celebrations of this woman’s inner experience are so relatable. I have those same experiences. The kindnesses and the care that people in Milly’s community offer each other were heartwarming then as they are now. The school and theater closures, the deaths and even the masks are part of how her community addressed the Pandemic. That’s not so different from what many of us are experiencing in our communities. She mentions the names of loved ones, those who made it and those who they lost. She expresses hope. She has Faith. Just like me, just like you, Milly is unique. And, like all of us, she is also having a very relatable human experience.
For many of us, our American identity story is that we are all special. This is true. But it is also true that we aren’t so unlike the other people who inhabit and have inhabited our planet for centuries. If we let ourselves believe that we are uniquely special, we might forget that other people feel have had feelings similar to our own and can empathize with our suffering. The yoga that developed thousands of years ago arose when humans felt the weight of their burdens, misperceptions, and needs, and sought a practice to bring relief and even freedom from them. The practices have endured because humans continue to suffer in familiar ways and yoga lays out an effective path to work with and maybe even overcome them.
What I’m going through matters and is happening to me in a very particular setting and with other people who very much matter AND if I go on believing, “no one understands…” or “I’m so ashamed that this is happening to me…” or “I’m alone in this feeling,” I’m adding to my suffering.
People do understand. Other people get it. Other people feel it. We’re brought to our knees and invited, again and again, to surrender to life itself. Don’t be fooled by believing that you are so very special that there isn’t someone who knows what you are going through and who cares. You were initiated into the human experience at the moment of conception, just like the rest of us. Let’s embrace the ways that our humanness unites us.