February 23, 2013. We're all something special.

So, I know I talk about it a lot, but in a moment last night, I was thinking again about how we all have a common need in our lives to feel worthy, and to feel special.

Movie star sunglasses--stalk me please. 

It came up in a silly way. A friend was apologizing for asking about my Instagram account, because she didn't want to seem like a stalker. Oddly, it occurred to me that there is something reassuring about being stalk-worthy. I think we all want to feel special and important, but we spend most of our time thinking: "hey, would someone just listen to," or "look at me?" Maybe I should feel a little sheepish about it, but I know I feel that way a lot of the time.

It probably seems at least a little narcissistic, but I want to be known and recognized for my value in everything I do. I think most people identify with that feeling. We want to feel like we're either uniquely qualified, or like we have earned a meaningful place.

I'm a little late to the dance, but I recently started watching the HBO series "Enlightened," and while I think Laura Dern's character Amy is a little nuts, I completely identify with her quest for meaning. I identify with the idea that she is suddenly awakened in her life. She suddenly looks at her life and wonders what she's been doing.

I don't necessarily feel good about how she attempts to transform her life, because while she spent two months in a glorified group therapy commune, she is still trying to change external things without really working on herself at all. And she doesn't accept responsibility for her role in reaching this place of despair. She blames it on the company she works for, and a man who humiliated and dumped her.

Sure, the guy she had an affair with is a complete jerk. And yes, the company she works for is unethical, and couldn't care less about the little people. But in the end, her position in life is really about her choices. She made the choices that kept her at the company for 15 years, without reaching her goals. She existed in poor relationships with men and her mother. If not for a mental breakdown, she probably would have been content to blindly follow the same path for the rest of her life.

But, for all of her bad choices, Amy is strangely endearing. She touches that part of my heart that recognizes the desire to feel like we either matter, or that we do something that matters.

Another HBO series recently explored the other side of this coin. In Lena Dunham's "Girls," Hannah has a "few day stand" with a complete stranger. He's recently separated, well off, and has nice things. Hannah fancies herself a writer, and maybe she is, but it's almost as if she throws herself in to dramas and misery for the sake of having experiences that make her seem important or real. In the course of the time she spends with this well off stranger, she realizes that she wants something she hasn't allowed herself want--happiness. She doesn't want to be constantly struggling and poor. In a weird way, she wants to be just like everyone else.

What she doesn't realize is that she doesn't have to be in the gutter to be special. What most of us don't realize is that we don't have to do anything to be special.

I think a lot of us fail to realize that we are special in our own rights, even if nobody else notices. A friend wanted to "stalk" my Instragram photos. It doesn't quite rise to the level of having a published book on someone's shelf (besides my own), but considering how I feel most days lately, I'll take it. 

It's hard sometimes to understand that commitment and time investment don't always translate to the success we hope for, or think we deserve. We don't always get to be special to the great big world. But there are moments in which we are special to someone. And there are moments when we have to really think about what we want, and we have to choose it. We have to choose it above everything else--even if what we want may seem simple and mundane.

Special, Garbage

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