Uniqueness – Not as License

Sometimes fully being oneself in plain sight can be viewed as rather weird or downright odd. Sometimes our uniqueness is labeled as strange, bizarre, quirky or slightly peculiar. ‘Different’ in a culture of uniformity is too frequently labeled as eccentric, curious, “out there,” slightly unconventional, eerie, a tad bit unorthodox, or being something akin to being a dork. Our uniqueness can have dramatic social implications, causing us to be the outsider, the alien, the cultural misfit or just so plain weird that we’re a social phenomenon entirely unto ourselves with no place within which to fit at all; being relegated to the outcast.

These kinds of conclusions are quickly drawn and judgments are carelessly rendered rather than seeing uniqueness as potentially fresh, distinctive, or entirely singular. Far too often uniqueness is directly correlated with weirdness, dumping it into an entirely negative and typically unredeemable social sideshow. Uniqueness is pathetically reduced to oddity. It is then seen as entertaining because face it, “odd” is entertaining. The throngs of society curiously mill about these sideshows seeking some form of entertainment or amusement at the ignorant expense of the miracle of uniqueness. If you happen to have had the misfortune of having been dumped in some sort of sideshow because of your uniqueness, you’re seen as a permanent resident unless you reinvent yourself and sacrifice your uniqueness as part of that reinvention. The cost to do that is astronomical and deadening.

The Loss of Rendering Conclusions and Judgments

These various labels that we apply to others or have applied to us create a sharp and tainting distinctiveness that separates and excludes, rather than incorporates and includes. The profound asset of our uniqueness becomes a crippling liability. We have these various labels dogmatically slapped on our foreheads in exceedingly bold type with the whole of our person then being identified based on whatever’s been scrawled on the label and slapped on our foreheads. Following the brutality and ignorance of uniqueness branded as oddity, or worse yet as a deficit, we are forever relegated to the sideshow of life. The richness of our uniqueness is then lost to us, and lost to a world wallowing in stereotypes. In such a “lose-lose” situation, we are all diminished in ways that we may never make up.

Rightly Exercising Our Uniqueness

In a culture that embraces tolerance and diversity, let’s make one point very clear. Being unique is not about taking license by being oneself and using it as a stage to elicit attention, or make some sort of controversial cultural statement, or use it as a pedestal to flaunt immoral behavior, or generate some sort of shock factor in those who are watching us be “us.” Simply put, possession of uniqueness does not include permission to use that uniqueness with impunity to create something that we’re not in order to fulfill a personal agenda or fuel a social mission of some sort. Our uniqueness is not a lifeless tool to be snatched up and errantly or thoughtlessly used in the service of whatever cause we choose to use it in. Being authentically oneself is much more responsible and careful than that.

Being oneself is about embracing a deep respect for the stunning and entirely vibrant uniqueness of all of creation; a uniqueness that has been carefully crafted, unapologetically exercised and fully manifest in each and every one of us. It’s respecting that uniqueness within us not as license to be itself at the cost of everyone else around it, but something that builds upon everything else around it. It is not a pedestal to demand tolerance of the aberrant behaviors that we take license to construct from of our uniqueness. Rather it’s a place where we bow in some soulful combination of deep appreciation and mind-boggling awe as we look to carefully unearth who and what we are without twisting or tainting who we are in the process. It’s has nothing to do with revisionist mentalities or self-decreed permission where we seize our uniqueness, plop it as some lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and methodically shape it to our designs or our likening without regard for what it really is. Uniqueness used in these ways will cease to be unique.

Uniqueness Gone Bad

The uniqueness of our individuality under the total control of the individual is likely to be driven by selfish and self-centered agendas that will make us unique, but uniquely troubled, dysfunctional, disoriented and distorted. The power of uniqueness in the hands of limited people with unlimited parameters is dangerous indeed. In a culture of self-determination, personal rights and the territorial thumping of our chests to declare that we’re the masters of our own fates we take license with our uniqueness that is not necessarily ours to take. The cultural mindset of brazen independence creates a misguided sense that we are indeed of our own making, and that if we don’t shape who we are in whatever image we’ve determined that to be, we will have completely squandered our lives.

Uniqueness Well Handled

It seems that our uniqueness is not something to be shaped by us, but understood by us. It’s not to be engineered by us, but explored by us. It’s not to be created by us, but cultivated by us. We do not set its agenda; rather we discern it so that we know enough of it to know the agenda it has set for us. Our uniqueness is a precious gift that’s designed to be understood so that we can participate in making it the most that it can be, not shaping it into what we want it to be. Our uniqueness holds within it the clues and the resources that tell us who we are, why we’re here and what we’re supposed to do with this gift called life.

Our uniqueness is most effectively nurtured and cultivated within moral and ethical parameters that don’t inhibit that individuality as the culture assumes, but rather creates a place for us to maximize that individuality. Moral and ethical parameters keep our uniqueness pure, supple and free from all the things that would tarnish it and ultimately destroy it. Uniqueness is a priceless gift that is as fragile as fine china, as tough as fired steel, and as broadly expansive as the creative genius of God. It is a gift beyond our ability to handle, but not beyond our ability to surrender to something greater than us so that it will eventually become something greater than us. Uniqueness surrendered and lived out in the enabling power and protective place of moral principles and ethical standards paves the way for that uniqueness to rise to unparalled heights, to be more than we can think or imagine, and to grow far beyond the horizons of any vision we could craft for it.

You are unique . . . that’s already an established reality. Amazingly, you are one of a kind. You’ve got one and only one shot at life. So, what are you going to do with the immense gift of your uniqueness? You will kill it or cultivate it. What will you do? Consider it.