A Strange Little Story For The Loners And Misfits Of The World

It strikes me as sad that the people we need most in this world so often feel so utterly alone.

A winter day, long ago. My child a tiny bundle of mittens, fur, and rosy red cheeks. Head back, tongue out, catching the snowflakes that fluttered down on a snow globe sort of afternoon.

Did you know every one of them is different? I ask.

What? Tongue disappeared. Curious eyes looking at me.

The snowflakes, I grin. No two are the same. Millions and billions and trillions and ZILLIONS of them and no two are the same. Every one is completely different I say.

I’d never seen eyes so round. Staring up into the sky in wonder.

We make snow angels and a snowman with cat ears and broom straw whiskers. Draw hearts in the snow with red food color in a squeeze bottle of water. Cold and tired, we go in for hot chocolate and marshmallows.

Later, after the bath and the bedtime story, when little eyes have grown heavy enough to close, I tiptoe away and turn out the light only to hear a tiny sleepy voice whisper in the dark. “Is it really true, Mommy?”

Is what true, sweetie?

That every snowflake is different?

It sure is, I say. I leave the door open a crack and pad away smiling.

The best part about children is that they’re not yet filled with the cynicism the world will eventually plant in the fertile soil of their little minds.

Because you know what adults say, right?

Yeah, you’re unique. Just like everyone else. Aren’t you a special snowflake, we scoff. Sometimes we drop the snow part and just call people who don’t share our worldview a flake. Wearing rose colored glasses. Stupid snowflake optimist doesn’t know how the world really works.

As if any of us does.

And somewhere, a star shines a little less brightly and an angel loses her wings.

You know what humans do, right? We make up stories. We’re hardwired for story because stories are how we understand the world.

Long ago, and far away, most of the stories we made up were about the sun and the stars because we didn’t understand them and the human mind can’t bear not knowing. People saw the sun dropping lower and lower in the sky, saw the land turning cold and dark, and they were frightened.

So, those long ago people had a festival with bonfires and dancing to call the sun back and lo and behold, the sun returned to shine on the land again and gardens grew, and life was good and abundant once again.

The world changed, but we didn’t. We’re still human.

We don’t need to make up stories about the stars or the sun anymore because we know how they work. Not entirely. But enough that we don’t need stories. Instead, we make up stories about ourselves and others.

Here’s one of those stories. No one likes me.

Here’s another story. This one is much sadder. No one cares.

Every Friday, I write a newsletter for writers and when people sign up, I ask a question. What’s your biggest struggle, I ask. Over and over, I get the same answer. I’m afraid to publish. I’m afraid I’m not good enough. I’m afraid no one will care. I’m afraid they won’t like me. I’m afraid.

Eight billion people on the planet, five billion online, and no one will like you? No one will care? A finer fairy tale has not been told.

It seems to affect creative people more than most, that fear, at least that’s what experience whispers. I never really hear accountants say they’re afraid people won’t like them. But writers and artists say it a lot.

It strikes me as sad that the people we need most in this world so often feel so utterly alone. My God, how bleak would the world be without them?

Who needs witches bearing rosy red apples pierced with poison when we have stories to wound ourselves with?

You understood wonder, once upon a time. Long ago, when you ran with the wind, collapsed into helpless giggles, and laid in the grass to marvel at a dewdrop clinging to a single blade of grass. When you were a child.

But then you grew up and went to school and learned to sit down and shut up and fit in. Perhaps worst of all, you learned to seek approval because who doesn’t want the gold stars and the green checkmarks and the teacher’s smiling approval and the praise Patricia or Gene got.

Add to it the mean relatives, the nasty neighbor, the schoolyard bullies echoing judgmental garbage they heard their parents say because mean isn’t how we are born it’s something we learn from adults who are supposed to know better than us, but so seldom do.

And slowly, slowly the lights went out.

Not in one dramatic flash of light to dark like a bolt of lightning lighting up a black sky on a stormy summer night. Not like flicking off the light switch, plunging the room into dark. You would have noticed that.

No, it happens slowly, like a dimmer switch. A slow and pernicious dimming of the lights that no one really notices, most especially yourself.

May I add, it’s not your fault?

You did what we all do. Reached around you and gathered up all the words, especially the mean spirited and hurtful ones, because that’s how the brain works. And with those words and thoughts you spun a story and then clutched it to your heart because it was yours.

You suck at math. You talk funny. Why can’t you be like Suzie. Or Johnny. Why can’t you sit still. Why can’t you pay attention. Stop talking. Stop coloring outside the lines. The sun isn’t green and flowers aren’t black. Wrong, wrong, wrong. What the hell is wrong with you?

Grown ass teachers, writing in a report card. Linda daydreams too much, she doesn’t pay attention, she isn’t working to her potential, she is so intelligent and she is wasting it.

And you watch mommy read those words and they become who you are. They look at you in the mirror, those words. You are a disappointment. You are wrong. What the hell is wrong with you?

But they’re not yours, the words that spun your stories.

They never were. They were handed to you by mean spirited people walking around with hearts two sizes too small, handing out misery like Halloween treats dropped into eager little hands.

I don’t know why.

Maybe life disappointed them once too often. Maybe someone was cruel to them. Maybe they confuse bitterness and cynicism with truth and reality and like a childhood game of hot potato, pass it on without thinking.

Maybe they were just born broken, although I doubt that. Maybe somebody broke them, too. That’s what generational trauma means. But why doesn’t really matter, in the long run.

What matters is that you spun a story made of other people’s words and that story says there’s something wrong with you. You don’t fit in.

No one likes you. No one cares.

This is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Let me tell you a story. This one is true. You are made of stardust.

The atoms and elements that make up your body were originally created in the extremely hot and dense cores of stars that exploded and fell to earth and created everything here. Human bodies are made of stardust.

I know what you’re going to say you pragmatist, you.

So is the trash and right you are. Everything is made of stardust. The to-do notes on my desk, stacks of notebooks, my coffee mug and the trash in my bin. For me, that does not diminish the wonder of the universe.

Up in space, there were stars. They exploded and fell to Earth and made everything that is here. How is that less of a miracle?

Stars exploded and fell to Earth and now here we are. Beings made of stardust, riding on a rock floating through space.

There’s no fishing line holding it up.

And on that crazy ass rock floating through space, just like the snowflakes, cynicism be damned, no two of us are exactly the same. Oh sure, we have hair and bones and blood. We laugh and we cry. We love and we grieve.

But the essence that is each of us? We are all snowflakes.

There’s no fitting in. There’s just being.

Like Max Ehrman wrote in The Desiderata in 1952, you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

Do you understand that? You have a right to be here.

If we’re going to make up stories anyway, why not make up stories that work for us? It’s not easy. But I promise, you’re worth the effort.

And somewhere, a star shines a little brighter and an angel gets her wings.

“To the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world.” — Dr. Seuss