Recently, I became aware of an appearance by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Sesame Street, in 1971, when he led the kids in a chant of “I am! Somebody!” Clip below:
(For anyone about to sea lion me with Jackson’s controversies: I’m aware of them. They don’t take away from the message he gave these kids. Also, you doing that is why PBS and CPB should never have been defunded. Maybe if you’d watched Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and Arthur and The Magic School Bus as a kid, you’d actually know things, instead of blustering and bloviating your way through life and acting a damned fool.)
Today, I started thinking about when I was a teenager, and the one chorus I kept hearing at school, from my sperm donor, from my brother (who thought he was the Man of the House, which he isn’t even today, married with two kids), and on Ye Olde Open Diary: “You’re special. Just like everyone else.” //sneer sneer sneer - you know if you keep doing that your face is gonna freeze that way, right?//
It always rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn’t really put my finger on why. Today, I think I figured it out: Being special is NOT a prerequisite for being valuable.
Think about that for a minute. Most people aren’t special. That was never the problem I had with being told I’m not special; I’d already figured that out by the time people decided I needed “tough love” and “brutal honesty” (and has anyone, anywhere, ever, thought that teenagers maybe need less gussied-up emotional abuse, and more empathy and compassionate wisdom, because being an adult is hard and it fucking sucks, and the world could just use more empathy and compassionate wisdom in general?). The problem I think I had, in hindsight, is the implication that if you’re not special, you’re not valuable, and therefore you shouldn’t be treated like you’re valuable, just because you’re not special.
And that is purest, grade-A bullshit. Just because a thing isn’t “special” doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, if only for its designated purpose, or to a specific person.
Example? My car. A 2019 Subaru Impreza. Over 136,000 miles (welcome to life in a rural state). Black, with a big patch of rust below the passenger side back door. Floor model. No bells, no whistles, just a boxer engine, four wheels, and a chassis. I owe more on the loan than the car is financially worth, not that I care, because I’m not selling it anytime soon, or probably ever. There is not one thing special about this car, and no one knows it better than me.
But my car is valuable to me. Because if I didn’t have a car, I wouldn’t be able to live my life. There are no grocery stores in walking distance from my house. There are no parks or attractions or restaurants or bars for at least ten miles in any direction. If I want to go on a date, most of them live in Middlebury or Burlington, which are 35 and 90 minutes from my house, each. Almost any job I get is going to be based out of Middlebury or Burlington or Montpelier (2 hours from my house, one way), or in another state entirely, so even if I’m working remotely, if there’s an in-person meeting, I need to get my ass there somehow. Even starting my garden requires a car, because the nearest garden supply store is three miles from my house, down a winding, two-lane road where cars are usually going well above the speed limit. (I can neither confirm nor deny that I am one of those drivers.) There are no sidewalks on the road after my neighborhood, and the sidewalks that exist are in pretty poor shape.
Being special is NOT a prerequisite for being valuable.
You may not be “special”, for whatever capitalist purposes of the word. But you are somebody. And that alone makes you valuable. If you still don’t believe it, I pity you. What a wretched life you must lead.
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