When you compare, you aren’t noticing what only you have to contribute
Q: I’ve been following your work for a long time, and I’m going to tell you what I’ve thought since you first coined the word Onlyness. Which is this: I am not that “only.” Yes, I am good at what I do, I get along with my colleagues just fine and I get promoted on par, which is to say, every few years. I get to do relatively interesting things, working at a few notable brands. On the weekends, I bliss out with a fancy cocktail on Friday, do some gardening on Saturday, maybe go on a long hike with my husband on Sunday, if I’m lucky. That just makes me ordinary, not extraordinary; certainly not that “only,” as you espouse.
Ah, Ordinary,
I’ve been slow in responding. Not because I forgot you, but because I haven’t known how to answer. I haven’t wanted to try and convince you that you playing small doesn’t serve the world.
But I’ve thought about your question a lot. Just this Saturday, in fact. I had gone shopping with a friend. (All the bread baking of Pandemic Times and 30 days of smoke-filled skies where one couldn’t even go outside to workout in California are now, ahem, fully reflected in my waistline.) There I was, just outside my dressing room, wearing some pink palazzo-style pants that I had just squeezed myself into when I thought of you. You see, my neighbor in the adjacent dressing room was trying on the same pants. She came out not only able to button her (much smaller size) pants but then trying on a chartreuse belt to accentuate her tiny, little waist.
And I found myself, thinking, “oh darn, these pants are just not for me”.
YOU SHRINK BY COMPARISON
Nothing about the pants had changed. Not the gorgeous fabrication. Not the color and how it works with my skin tone. Not the many ways I could style them with existing things in my closet. What changed was how I was suddenly comparing the pants, instead of noticing what was true for me.
This is what you are doing, too, Ordinary.
Based on your own description, you are looking around at those you work with in order to see yourself. You say you’re doing relatively interesting things, which is, by definition, comparative. You get promoted “on par,” i.e. averaging out vis-a-vis others. And, by not being above this particular crowd, you think of yourself as “ordinary.” Ordinary as in commonplace, standard, uninteresting.
As you compare yourself, you find nothing especially worth noting. (When I compared my waist to the lady next door, I found myself wanting.) Comparison-itis, I wrote way back in 2011, is its own dreaded, recurring disease. You shrink by comparison.
So, can I ask you to notice what you’re noticing?
You see yourself through the lens of the rooms you live in, work in. This is why you don’t notice what you — because of your Onlyness — have to contribute. You are looking at the comparative reflection, not the contributive real thing.
Your question asked if you are someone that special.
The Onlyness construct says you are, simply, some (space) one.
As “someone,” you are an individual in the context of the group. “Some one”, on the other hand, is singling out a specific. It’s not just semantics, but a difference that reflects a distinction.
As “some one” you do not have to be “special” or “extraordinary” to be better by comparison. As “some one” you stand in a spot only one does, so you add value by loving what you love.
NOT ON PURPOSE
Let me repeat that. You only have to love what you love. Really.
But, my guess is, despite the repetition, you will not believe this. You haven’t thus far, after all.
Most of us know just one way of being. It’s what we’re taught, or shown. It feels true not because we’re so committed to it, because it’s all we know. It’s like knowing one small corner of your own room, as Rilke would have written, say that spot near the window where you can see your garden growing. It feels secure, clear, complete. But it is also limited, small, confining. You shrink to fit it, not even realizing you’re doing so.
You do not know (yet) what feeds you, Ordinary. Because if you did, you’d be “espousing” it.
WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP?
You remind me of a conversation I had with a former editor of mine. She had seen my work up close, articulating why this construct mattered; how the genius of Steve Jobs was always valued but the same genius embodied in a DeShawn Jobs or a DeAnna Jobs would be questioned.
She was in the middle of a job search, and I was in town for some speaking event, so we found ourselves talking over dinner. “Am I that Only?” she asked.
In the course of our conversation, I noticed what made her light up. After an hour, I asked her if she would like me to share those observations. And, as I did, she cried. She felt seen. And valued. And the pain of a job search, of her trying to find a new home where she belonged, was temporarily replaced with a vision that she could, ya know, do work where she could add the value that only she had.
We asked our waiter for a pen and a napkin so I could write these notes down for her. But I feared even then that despite this particular moving moment of clarity, it wouldn’t stick. The next time she had a chance to define what was valuable, she would not notice what made her truly herself, but merely what others valued in her. She, like you, resists the construct, because she wants so much to be “special” and I just want for her to be . . . her.
Onlyness says that you do not have to be better, faster, smarter. (No matter how -er you are, there is always someone more -er. So competition and superiority are ridiculous time wasters.) You only need to be.
In reflection, maybe the problem was how I approached it. That I did the noticing work for her. That I tried to convince her. Instead of asking her to do her own work.
DO THE WORK OF NOTICING
So let me offer you a few exercises? (You can pick and choose among them.)
Put a 3×5 index card in your pocket. And then over the course of a week, notice. It takes a while to still oneself enough to notice what is true. It’s how you can sit in a garden with no other distractions for even an hour and soon you’ll notice the butterflies, the hummingbirds, the sway of the grasses. Noticing oneself is similar. What is nearly always true about you?
Or, do a strengthsfinder test. Colleen Boselli and I were just checking in with each other, and I wrote her how much I am loving writing this column (the one you’re reading), and she wrote back how she’s been following along, and I am “getting great energy from using [my] strengths of legacy, change agent, writer, narrator, and authenticity — among others.”
Because she had helped me interpret that strengthsfinder test, her note made me smile. Similarly, the Onlyness Canvas can be a useful tool for you to see what is true for you, both in the stories of your past and what you want to see changed.
Ask 10 friends what they notice is distinct to you. An amazing friend has a Google doc she sends out every year on her birthday to ask what’s worth celebrating about her, and what should she double down on. I love, love, love filling it out as I think of her; I’d bet good money that people are helping her to name her Onlyness so can live fully into the whole of her.
YOU IN RELATION TO YOU
We have these eyes that face out. So perhaps it’s not surprising that often we notice ourselves in relationship to others. In some ways, that serves us; to see how we are connected. But in other ways, it can mean we find ourselves ranking and evaluating ourselves vis-a-vis our environment. So it takes new skills to see, and center the capacity to see, how each of us can add value.
We don’t need to compete, but to contribute. We need only love what we love. So go against the need to be special, and instead seek your existing completeness.
Do that, and you will see what I see. Some one. Distinct. Valuable. Onlyness.
