Individual Exceptionality

I don't recall his name, but I recall his words.

We washed dishes together during the summer I enjoyed at the YMCA of the Rockies. It was a glorious job. I didn't start work till mid-afternoon, just before the often daily thunderstorms would roll about the mountains, darkening the skies, freshening the air and scattering hikers to lower elevations and places of relative refuge. All morning I could run on the trails in the National Park that bordered three sides of the camp, exploring the bridle paths or wander about the camp enjoying the beauty of the surrounding mountains.

It was an extraordinary setting. So I felt rather privileged. I suppose many people would sneer at my sense of privilege; I lived in a primitive bunk-house with shared bathrooms and showers and had a top berth of a bunk shared with a Japanese exchange student who liked to have a guest now and then. My work duties were similarly unglamorous; afternoons and evenings were spent in a steamy room dominated by a large dish-washing machine or alongside another smaller but still sweat inspiring machine close to the kitchen.

From childhood I've been drawn to people from other places. Perhaps this is a legacy of my father who befriended the German survivor of a Soviet prison camp, my mother's far-flung friendship with a Lebanese family separated from their homeland by war, or my grandfather's Odyssey stories of leading groups of young people around the world. So one morning before our shift I found myself listened to his story.

He was going to school in Chicago, preparing to be an engineer. I suggested that perhaps he would return to his South American nation and serve in an influential role. His reply was emphatic.

“I'm just an ordinary person.”

I argued with him saying that this sentiment was anathema to me. No one is “just an ordinary person.” We are all exceptional. We are all individuals with the potential to exert influence and bring about change, to accomplish deeds of significance and importance. To consider one's life as ordinary was a horrible acquiescence to mediocrity and insignificance. To consider one's self exceptional is to have a ealistic expectation that we are each uniquely important, not to advocate a delusory self-concept like that of the protagonist of Sinclair Lewis' Babbit.

He would not agree with me and seemed content as an insignificant man.

For years I have remembered this conversation with the man I shall call Jose. Years of working with young people convince me that all students wish to excel and to be exceptional individuals. Mastery is an innate desire that educators are called to nurture, cultivate, and awaken if necessary. A persistent pursuit of mastery, an enduring desire to excel, and a sense of significance are goals attainable for all students.

These pursuits point to a quality I term individual exceptionality. This is a dynamic quality of individual uniqueness, importance, and potential for creativity, influence, and relationship. Each person is characterized by individual exceptionality though it may be dormant, suppressed, unrecognized, or underdeveloped.

In an unintended manner, Jose's denial of individual exceptionality is evidence of this quality in his life. Our interaction exerted a significant impact on my life, leading me to embrace the imperative of individual exceptionality; living that unleashes creativity, active charity, and depths of worship latent within each person.

Embrace individual exceptionality!