All my life I’ve wanted to be special. Saying that, I cringe a little. Such an admission makes me feel like something’s wrong with me. It reveals a a need for or expectation of extra attention, a kind of pride or even arrogance. As an oldest child, I come by this desire honestly, Important to my developing this need to be special were those two years when I was the only child and received all of my parents’ attention. Three more children would follow me, each depleting the attention I had had all to myself. I think now that my struggle to win back that attention set me up for a lifetime of seeking to be special, pursuing one achievement after another. Many of you, if not all of you, may also have this desire. This is not a need exclusive to oldest children. Middle children may feel lost between older and younger siblings and seek extra attention in future relationships. Youngest children, having been babied and given abundant attention, may seek the same from all their relationships. Why wouldn’t we all want to feel special—at least to one other person if not to many? Is this desire really a problem?
Consider, if you will, the peculiar status of the word “special.” Whether employed as adjective or noun, the word means “distinctive, uncommon, out-of-the-ordinary.” Its opposite is ordinary. It implies elevation and thus separation from the common or usual. So wanting to be special becomes more than wanting extra attention. It becomes wanting to be better than others and may come out of or lead to pride or arrogance. The individualism of U.S. culture encourages the drive to be special and results in pride and arrogance and separation.
The Rainbow Fish, a simple children’s story illustrates what happens when one is very special. Rainbow Fish was “the most beautiful fish in the entire ocean. His scales were every shade of blue and green and purple, with sparkling silver scales among them.” He delighted in the other fish’s amazement, but considered himself too good to play with them, reacting with outrage when the little blue fish asked for one of his shiny scales. When the little blue fish shared with the other fish how arrogantly and selfishly Rainbow Fish acted, they turned away from Rainbow Fish, leaving him all alone and lonely. Here we see clearly the dangers of wanting to be special.
While Western cultures promote the desire to be special, Eastern cultures encourage humility, and, therefore, so does Buddhism. I recently ran across an appalling example of this in Eight Verses of Mind Training by Langri Tangpa: “Whenever I come into anyone’s company, may I regard myself as the lowest of all, and, from the depth of my heart, value others as higher than myself.” Traditional Eastern cultures are often criticized as being less than honest or even bordering on hypocrisy about humility, and Western psychology teaches that such self abasement is not healthy. Even a Tibetan lama now living in the West teaches that self-depreciation is as counter-productive as self-aggrandizement. And Western teachers like Jack Kornfield recognize that we need to develop a healthy sense of self, recognizing our strengths and weaknesses, before we can see that the self is constructed and is not really separate or unchanging, bur rather constantly changing and thoroughly interdependent with all of reality.
Chen Yu-Hsi suggests that humility must reflect the middle way as taught by the Buddha (https://thuvienphatviet.com/chen-yu-hsi-ph-d-the-buddhist-perception-of-humility/#:~:text=D.). He offers this definition of humility:
Behave without arrogance, self-conceit and other egoist tendencies such as jealousy and an impulse to show off. Respect others and show a genuine human interest in them without a desire to please or to impress. While we do not recognize self-depreciation or self-effacement as part of humility, we must recognize that our biological self is fraught with frailties and ignorance and that a true self characterized by such divine qualities as love, compassion, joy and wisdom is innate in everyone of us.
This is the humility Rainbow Fish learns. He realizes that he cannot be happy on his own. He needs to be with the other fish. His beauty is useless to him with no one to admire it. So he seeks advice from the starfish and then the octopus, who tells him, “Give a glittering scale to each of the other fish. You will no longer be the most beautiful fish in the sea, but you will discover how to be happy.” It is, of course, not easy for Rainbow Fish, but once he gives one scale to the little blue fish and receives its gratitude, “a rather peculiar feeling came over Rainbow Fish. For a long time he watched the little blue fish swim back and forth with his new scale glittering in the water.” I think that “peculiar feeling” was joy in another’s joy, a form of love and compassion innate in all of us, and I think that feeling allowed Rainbow Fish to give away all of his scales, but one. “And the more he gave away, the more delighted he became. When the water around him filled with glimmering scales, he at last felt at home among the other fish.” He was in the end the same as all of them.
This children’s book is—like the best of them—a simple story that reverberates with feeling and meaning. When Rainbow fish resists giving up his scales, so do we. We know how good it feels to be special. But when he gives away a scale, we recognize Rainbow Fish’s pleasure in making someone happy and his increasing delight in making more and more fish happy by giving away all but one of his scales. Finally, we share his happiness when he becomes one of the community. The book captures the tension we feel between being special and being nothing special, but it comes down on the side of nothing special—on the side of humility. Why humility? We see several benefits in being humble for Rainbow Fish.
First of all, he is no longer separate and alone, cherishing only himself. He has learned to listen to and think of others, and in the process, he has discovered the pleasure of seeing them be happy and the joy of helping them be happy. In the process, he moves from self cherishing to cherishing others. Selfish in the past, he now feels compassion and love for others. Giving away nearly all of his beautiful scales, he demonstrates his caring. His humility has resulted in altruism, that is, devotion to the welfare of others.
Equally important, Rainbow fish has become wise. He has come to understand his mistakes. He sees how his selfishness hurt him and others. In Buddhist terms, he has learned that he cannot exist separate and alone, that he is a part of a community, thoroughly interdependent with the other fish. Their anger and rejection make him miserable; their joy makes him happy. He has learned that his possessions—his scales—don’t make him happy, but that delight in others’ joy and companionship does. The book demonstrates that mistakes can lead to growth if we come to understand that our acts were harmful and come to see how to act in beneficial ways.
Being humble about and accepting of mistakes and suffering, we can learn and develop. Reacting in humiliation keeps us trapped, often defending our ego. Reacting in humility and openness to learning frees us. In “A Journey from Humiliation to Humility,” Corrado Pensa says:
Whenever I have distracted thoughts, the wish to verbally belittle others, feelings of self-importance or self-satisfaction, when I have the intention to describe the faults of others, pretension, and the thoughts to deceive others, whenever I’m eager for praise or have the desire to blame others, whenever I have the wish to speak harshly and cause dispute, at such times I should remain like a piece of wood. Whenever I have impatience, laziness, fear, shamelessness, or the desire to talk nonsense, if thoughts of partiality arise, at these times, too, I should remain like a piece of wood.
Remaining like a piece of wood is Pensa’s way of saying, “just stop.” Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Take a few deep breaths and refrain from the impulse to be harmful in any of these ways. Of course, to stop, we must first recognize the impulse. A practice of mindfulness, especially in meditation, will enable us to get good at seeing our impulses before we give into them. Watching the ego spin out its illusions of being special—more important, more beautiful, or more worthy than others, for example—we get familiar with the desires, anger, fears, and other emotions that result in harm. Then when we see that the ego is in control, we can refrain from being led down a path we know will end badly. And when we do go down that path, we can reflect on what happened and why and then set an intention to behave differently the next time.
Learning to deal with minor adversities is a crucial part of training.the mind. Major losses or suffering may overwhelm us and take a lot of time and effort to accommodate. Sometimes they are simply too much for us. But we can learn and grow from smaller blows. Every day life offers many of these. We spill our coffee, forget an appointment, or find ourselves unable to be attentive. Someone insults us, perhaps unintentionally. Someone else cuts us off in traffic. We arrive home exhausted and our spouse wants us deal with a child who’s misbehaved. All of these are opportunities for practicing humility.
If we find we are beating ourselves up for making a mistake like spilling coffee or forgetting a meeting or not being alert, we are humiliating ourselves. Our ego is telling us that we should be better than human. When someone else treats us in a way we feel we don’t deserve, for example, by suggesting we’re overweight or pulling into our lane of traffic without any warning or expecting us to parent after a hard day at work, we can feel disrespected or taken advantage of—as if the other person is humiliating us. Again our ego is the problem. We forget that others are only human—flawed, caught up in their own drama, and not thinking of us in any way, only of getting what they want. Their actions speak of who they are and not at all of who we are.
Instead of reacting in fear or guilt or anger when faced with little frustrations, we can work with them. First, we can remind ourselves that we are just like everyone else, nothing special. Being humble about ourselves, we accept our and others’ actions as simply human. Then, we can take a new interest in working with the abundant little blows each day brings. We can try to understand where the frustration is coming from. Why did we spill the coffee, miss an appointment, space out in a meeting? Could it have been helped or not? Is there something to be learned here about self acceptance, over scheduling, why we spaced out, or? Is there something we can do in the future to prevent these little mistakes? Similarly, we don’t have to take what others do personally. We can try to understand other people’s disrespect or failure to think of us. We can speculate about their motivation. Are they having a bad day? Are they trying to be helpful? Are they in a hurry because they’re late picking up their kids? We can see those who are challenging for us as objects of our spiritual growth, providing opportunities for patience, wisdom, and compassion.
In other words, instead of feeling resistance and frustration, we have this interest. We get curious about what would have upset us before. Eventually, we learn to accept ourselves and others with sweetness, without outward or inner impatience, peacefully. We “journey from the suffering which is experienced as humiliation, to the freedom of humility and seeing things as they are. Humility comes from earth (humus), being firmly planted on the earth rather than being overwhelmed and carried away by projections, fantasies, desires and aversions.”
When we are humble, we acknowledge that we don’t know it all or have it all and that we can’t do it all. We recognize our need for others and the thoroughgoing interdependence of reality. In Buddhist circles, people take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—the Buddha as an example of someone who awakened to the true nature of reality, the Dharma as his teachings, and the Sangha as the community of practitioners. The refuge vows are taken early, emphasizing how one needs a great deal of help to awaken. Acknowledging our fallibility actually benefits us because we become mindful of our own limitations and allow others to help us. We become more open to listening to others and trying to understand because we know we don’t know everything and might learn something we didn’t know. In this way, we become wise.
Humble, we are more friendly, cherishing others as much as we do ourselves. We become altruistic. Accepting human fallibility, we are able to laugh at mistakes and develop our sense of humor. We’re able to learn and become wise. We make a spiritual practice out of meeting the small adversities with acceptance and curiosity and interest. We become very stable and strong, not easily thrown off balance or off course by trouble. And when there are enough of us willing to be ordinary people, perhaps we can change a culture obsessed with ego and drama and the need to be special. The Dalai Lama shows us the way: “powerful, big, charismatic, self-confident — but utterly humble. A person with humility is content with who they are and . . . delighted to honor others” (https://robinacourtin.com/q-a-with-robina/humility-and-low-self-esteem-high-and-low/).
In “Nothing Special: The Joy of Being Ordinary,” Geri Larkin writes:
It turns out that, when we honestly dare to be ordinary, the wisdom of the universe opens up for us. We see our own conditioned habits and understand how they can be untangled with a minimum of harm done to those around us. We get to watch for what each day is asking of us; maybe it’s doing some volunteer work or heading off to a job or staying in bed all day to give a cold a chance to move on. We notice more—a whole world of miracles that unfolds and unfolds without end. Anxiety lessens. Gratitude expands. Our intuition may skyrocket (and often does) and our creativity grows. We become available. We learn to rely completely on our direct experience, not on our thinking and reasoning.
. . .
It gets better. Joy happens. We feel free. We are no longer shaken up—by anything—finally realizing, if we are lucky, that being ordinary is just the ticket to a wonderful life.
Surely, it is time to give up the desire to be special. It doesn’t seem to serve us or the world very well. Instead, let’s try a different route—that of the Rainbow Fish. Let’s be ordinary, humble, “nothing special.” Let it be so.