Heroes Not Zombies

What do you think when you look at these lemons?

Do you think some of them look lumpy and ugly? Does it bother you that some of them are really small, and others really big?

I think they look beautiful. I love their diversity. The fact that some are very nobbly whilst others are smooth fascinates me. I love the shades of yellow and green in their skins. I adore seeing the small ones cradled amongst the large ones. I’m fascinated by their shapes.

In this one basket you can see that every single lemon is unique.

It’s harder to see uniqueness if the producer, or merchant, sets standards with a narrow range, stipulating limits on the degree of diversity he will accept.

The practice of setting “norms”, “standards” and narrow expectations tends to obscure uniqueness, but uniqueness is still the essence of reality.

Diversity reveals uniqueness to us.

It shows us that every single lemon, every single flower, every single creature, every single human being is unique. Each one comes to life at a particular time in a specific place. Each one has its own unique experiences as it grows….experiences differences in weather, climate, interaction with other forms of life.

I think we humans have obscured the fact of uniqueness in two ways.

Firstly, through “mass” anything….from mass production to mass consumption. A focus on the mass blinds us to uniqueness.

Secondly, we tend to confuse “individuality” with “uniqueness”.

We all want to be treated as individuals, don’t we? I know I do. But a focus on individuality carries a danger of fragmentation. It separates us. Mary Midgely, the English philosopher wrote about the phenomenon of “atomisation” very well. She warned of the dangers of failing to the see the whole when we examined something only in its parts, or its “atoms”. And, in particular, she objected to the neoliberal idea that there is no such thing as society, that the best way to structure a society is for everyone to pursue their own selfish interests in a free marketplace. Those ideas have destroyed communities.

I don’t want to be “just an example of a group”. I don’t want to be treated as “just a number”, as a statistic. I want to be seen, known and treated as an individual. How do I square that circle? By focusing on uniqueness.

Our individuality is often defined by listing our differences from others, our separateness from others.

But our uniqueness combines our differences with our commonalities.

How so?

“No man is an island”

I don’t exist separate from something called Nature. I don’t exist apart from something called The Earth. I don’t exist disconnected from other human beings. I don’t exist separate from other forms of Life.

It’s taken the universe 14 billion years to make YOU. It’s never created YOU before. It will never create YOU again.

“Be yourself, everyone else it taken”

When you meet someone, when you make a new friend, when you get together with your family, you tell your story. You tell the story of where and when you were born, of the events and experiences of your life and how they shaped you.

That story is unique.

Just like everybody else’s.

It’s the circumstances, the contexts, the environments, the specifics of time, place, and experience which create our uniqueness, and the uniqueness of our story.

As a doctor, nothing gave me greater delight than to have the privilege of hearing unique human stories every single day of my work.

I love diversity.

I love uniqueness.

I find it beautiful.