We’re Not As Unique As We Think

The older I get, the less convinced I am that any of us are as unique as we think we are.

I probably believed it more when I was younger—that what I felt, what I struggled with, what I valued, even the way I saw the world, was somehow especially mine. That my thoughts were singular. My pain more layered. My questions more personal.

But life has a way of wearing down that illusion.

You live long enough, meet enough people, and pay close enough attention, and a pattern begins to emerge (one that made me uncomfortable, at first): most of us are shaped by the same fears, the same longings, the same quiet wounds.

The details may change, of course. Our families are different. Our histories are different. The shape of our lives is different. But underneath all that, I find that human beings are often moved by the same things.

We want love. We want to matter. We want to be understood. We want to feel chosen. And we fear rejection, invisibility, loss, and not being enough.

And yet, we are raised to believe otherwise.

We are told we are special. Unique. Meant to stand out.

I understand why. The people who love us do experience us that way. To our parents, to those closest to us, we are precious and irreplaceable. There is truth in that we are deeply important within small circles.

But being special to a few people is not the same as being inherently special in any larger sense.

That may sound harsh, cynical even. I don’t mean it that way. I find it grounding.

Because so much of life now feels built around the pressure to be exceptional. Not just decent, but remarkable. Not just human, but extraordinary. As though an ordinary life is somehow a disappointing one.

I’m no longer sure that’s true. And I'm more convinced that this pressure has done us no good.

Sometimes I think what we call uniqueness is just a very human attachment to our own importance. Our ego. We want to believe our inner world is rarer than it is. That our suffering is deeper. Our insight sharper. Our life somehow set apart.

But even the people the world seems to collectively admire are not universally seen that way. Someone like Mother Teresa or Princess Diana may be adored by many, and still questioned by others. Public admiration has never been universal. It is always shaped by perspective, belief, and personal reading. There is always someone unconvinced.

Which makes “special” feel far less absolute than we pretend. It turns out to be conditional. Dependent on who is looking.

And then there is the larger question I keep coming back to: how human of us to assume that we are special at all.

Special to whom?

To ourselves, obviously. But what about the rest of life on earth? Do dogs think so? Do elephants? Do trees? Do plants? Or is this just another story we tell ourselves because it comforts us to believe we sit at the centre of things?

The older I get, the more arrogant that assumption feels.

And also, strangely, the more freeing it feels to let it go.

Maybe I do not need to be extraordinary. Maybe none of us do. Maybe it is enough to simply be one human life among many—feeling many of the same things, asking many of the same questions, carrying many of the same hopes.

There is humility in that thought. And comfort too.

Because if none of are uniquely burdened as I once thought, then perhaps we are also less alone than we imagined.

And maybe that is the more useful truth. So ask yourself this again - Are we unique?