Realizing You’re Ordinary

When special becomes average

Category: Existential

This booklet is for people who were special. Not in the everyone-is-special-in-their-own-way sense. Actually special. Measurably special. You were the smart kid. The talented one. The gifted student. Then something happened. You discovered everyone here was special too. You weren’t special anymore. You were average. Ordinary.

Who You Were

The smart one. That was your identity. Your role. Your value. You were the one who understood things quickly. Who got good grades without trying. Who teachers called on when they wanted the right answer. Being smart wasn’t just something you were. It was who you were. You didn’t have to try. Not really. Things came easily. The ease was proof. You were different. Special. Gifted.

The Moment You Know

You’re in a class. Or a meeting. Or a conversation. Someone says something brilliant. Something you didn’t think of. Couldn’t have thought of. You realize: they’re smarter than me. Significantly smarter. And they’re not the only one. You look around. They’re all like this. All smart. All capable. All special. You’re not special here. You’re ordinary. Average. Unremarkable.

What It Feels Like

Shame. Deep, burning shame. You’re not who you thought you were. You’re not who everyone thought you were. You’re ordinary. The shame is overwhelming. Confusion. Your entire understanding of yourself is wrong. Everything you thought you knew. Everything you based your decisions on. Your identity. Your worth. Your future. It’s all wrong.

Who Are You Now

Who are you if you’re not special? That was your entire identity. Your worth. Your purpose. Your self. If you’re not special, what are you? What’s the point of you? Why do you matter? You don’t have answers. You’ve never needed answers. You were special. That was enough. You’re grieving the person you thought you were. The future you thought you’d have.

Good Company

Mindset — Carol Dweck, 2006
Dweck spent decades studying what happens to gifted kids when talent stops being enough. Her finding is devastatingly simple: the ones who were praised for being smart collapse when things get hard, while the ones who were praised for effort adapt. It’s the book that explains exactly how “you’re so gifted” became the most damaging compliment of your childhood. Short, clear, and it will make you angry at every adult who called you special. Then it will show you what to build instead.
Amadeus — Miloš Forman, 1984
Salieri is talented. Mozart is transcendent. Salieri knows the difference with a precision that destroys him. Forman made a film about the exact moment when someone who was exceptional in every room they’d ever entered meets the person who makes exceptional look ordinary. It’s not about jealousy. It’s about the annihilation of an identity that was built entirely on being the best. The most devastating film about discovering you’re not what you thought you were.
A Rush of Blood to the Head — Coldplay, 2002
Chris Martin made an album about wanting to be extraordinary and suspecting you might not be. Every track reaches for something enormous and lands somewhere human, ambitious, aching, slightly too earnest, trying harder than cool people are supposed to try. It’s the sound of someone who hasn’t made peace with being ordinary yet but is starting to hear the silence where the applause used to be.