Each of us wants to be special. At least in something.
We search for ourselves and our purpose, dig into the past, analyze mistakes, plan the future.
And we are advised to live in the present.
Because life is a moment — in Now.
But right now, you are sitting at a computer, sipping coffee from a cup, hunched over or with one leg crossed over the other. Chewing something. Maybe smoking…
The Crown of Divine Creation
Meanwhile, the body is working — chewing, swallowing, breathing, pumping blood. Thoughts run through the brain’s synapses, the left hemisphere switched to logic, the right to images.
The mind dominates the body, and we (Homo sapiens — the crown of divine creation) are now capable of producing a new complex sentence, perhaps even with subtle humor or hidden double meaning…
While we think, our heart continues to beat, the stomach digests a sandwich, the useful is absorbed, the harmful is neutralized, waste moves through the digestive tract toward exit, and billions of RNA molecules in each cell of our body produce new proteins of life.
The entire biological mechanism — in which everything is perfectly fitted to everything else — works smoothly and without interruption.
Including the mind — the mind given to us by nature so that we could realize how exceptional we are.
So that, unlike animals, we could not only see the beauty of the surrounding world, but also (just think about it!) describe this world in mathematical and physical formulas, capture it in paintings and poems, photograph it with a camera — also invented by the mind — and share our creations through “artificial intelligence.”
One of a Kind
You are unique. You are a one-of-a-kind specimen!
There has never been anyone like you on planet Earth before, and there never will be again! Nature made us unique.
We were endowed with reason, and therefore we can understand this. Understand and realize that it is time to stop comparing everyone with everyone else: who is better/worse, smarter/dumber, stronger/weaker, and so on.
Each of us is an absolutely unique creation, existing in the present moment.
Just imagine — there are now 8 billion of us on the planet: independent little cells moving within the vast organism of the Universe, granted the happiness of AWARENESS of ourselves.
And we are all moving somewhere, colliding and parting like particles under a microscope in chaotic Brownian motion.
Brownian motion is the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a liquid or gas, caused by collisions with molecules of the surrounding medium. Due to these random impacts, a particle frequently changes its direction and speed.
— (R. Brown, 1827)
I wonder — do these particles understand anything?
And if they had reason, could they avoid the impacts of the “environment” and change their direction and speed by their own will?
Oh, power of reason, grant me the ability to understand the meaning — at least by a hundredth of a percent…
Some kind of closed loop. Rat races that return each new generation to the same existential questions that troubled our ancestors five or ten thousand years ago…
Or maybe it’s not a circle, but a spiral? An evolving, pulsating spiral that, compressing and expanding, returns to itself each time in a new quality?
With new knowledge, a new survival gene tested “on humans,” which can now be preserved for oneself in selfish purposes of self-improvement, according to the wise principles of natural selection…
It is ridiculous for a seed to complain about bad soil that raised it into lettuce and not into a cedar. It was a lettuce seed.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Purpose
So what was I writing about?
Rambling from thought to thought…
So where is the uniqueness?
My own, personal, individual uniqueness?
That’s exactly the point — we are trying to solve this question in the simplest and most foolish way: read — get an answer.
We search for solutions with the mind, forgetting that the mind is only one of our “working tools,” with rather limited functions.
Personally, I don’t really like the word “purpose.” Nor do I like the phrases “personal growth” or “spiritual growth.”
Take a tree, for example — it doesn’t worry about its purpose: it grows, sheds leaves in due time, blooms when needed, and bears fruit in autumn.
Inside each fruit there is a pit or seed, which already knows what kind of tree it is and where it needs to grow.
If only we could discern our own “seeds and pits” and learn to follow their knowledge…
Yes, by the way — an un-sprouted seed can rot, or someone might simply pick it up and eat it!
Related writings:
On The Blind Spot of Our Own Nature
Can a rational person actually fall in love and stay conscious while doing it?
Walking on the Edge of Thought
If this feels familiar
When You Know What to Do but Cannot Do It
(enter 2432026)
This feels like a gentle ego detox. I mean that in a good way.
You start with the craving to be special, then quietly dismantle it by zooming out to the body, the species, the 8 billion “cells” in the universe’s organism.
The Brownian motion metaphor is brilliant because it both humbles and dignifies us: yes, we’re buffeted by forces, but we also have awareness.
I especially love the seed image at the end. It reframes “purpose” from something to hunt with the mind into something already encoded that we either allow to sprout or let rot.
The piece doesn’t answer “who am I?” so much as invite the reader to trust that they are already someone.
Thanks for the great read