Terminal Uniqueness
We’ve all said it, aloud or to ourselves: Why me? Why is this happening to me?! I’m as guilty as the next person of feeling like I am the singular victim of some nasty turn of Fate, the only one to suffer a given illness, accident, or calamity. Identifying as a victim is problematic enough, and material for another time. My focus here is on the “singular”: why I usually assume that I am the only one to have ever experienced this particular affliction.
Whether a physical illness or an emotional gut punch of anger or grief, I’m often convinced that no one else has been there. Good or bad, first love or first heartbreak, how can you possibly understand? As Iggy Pop crooned, “How can I explain personal pain?”
Such delusional thinking leads to an ominous conclusion: I’m beyond the pale. None of your remedies, your cures, your palliatives, and your strategies—while I admit they have worked for you and others— will work for me. They can’t, because I’m different. Once firmly grounded in this mindset, nothing you suggest to me will work. And I have lots of experience to prove this is true: I’m still suffering in some aspects of my life. “Nothing has worked” leads to “Nothing can work.”
Such thinking is called “terminal uniqueness.” In the plethora of “Anonymous” programs spawned by the original Alcoholics Anonymous, many an alcoholic, addict, overeater, smoker, gambler, or debtor has failed to recover because of this self-imposed roadblock. People who constantly devour self-help books always in search of the one that will finally fix them but never quite landing on it, are unconsciously driven by the sense that the rules/suggestions that transform others just won’t work for them. The cost is high:
1. The conviction that we are unique makes the effort to follow through on any healing path seem futile. We take ourselves out of the race, convinced that tried-and-true techniques will lead us to yet another dead end. We distance ourselves from the shared human experiment of getting through this life. We reject strategies that could help. And if our lives are at stake—whether we’re in the iron grip of addiction or battling stage 4 cancer—we may be on the lonely road to suicide, Terminal 1.
2. This sense of being different also separates us off from others, and isolation can kill as surely as any physical affliction: Terminal 2. We are a social species, and we need each other to survive. We are not self-contained. We are so ill-equipped for survival that human child-rearing takes much longer than that of other mammals.
In my yoga tradition, we say that the guru moves around the kula: the community’s “teacher” at any moment is the person with the expertise most required for the task at end. I may know a lot about yoga, but you don’t want me replacing your carbuerator or performing heart surgery.
The good news? No one is that different!
When recently in despair that a healing modality that helped others just wouldn’t work for me, I had a lightbulb moment: The psychic realm is slippery, ephemeral, harder to articulate, and hence easily informs me that I am different. But I admit that in the physical realm I am subject to the same laws of physics as every other body:
- Gravity
- Growth, maturation, decay, dissolution, entropy,
- Change
Sun warms my body. Food provides nutrients and gives me energy to burn. Physical activity depletes my body, which then needs rest. My body grew and developed; now it’s aging. Just like yours.
I further concede that my body, like yours, is composed of bones, muscles, connective tissue, organs, hormones and other chemicals, on down to cells, molecules, and atoms. I’m made of the same stuff, woven of same cloth, as the rest of you. . . . So, I’m not that different!
Looking around, I also noticed that my experiences are not unique: pretty much every physical affliction I’ve had has a name and a description because someone else had it too. And the remedies work in the same the same way for everyone, be it open-heart surgery or the smallpox vaccine. And even the still incurable diseases have been subject of lots of “alternative” treatments, religious and spiritual rituals, because others have hit the same wall.
In fact, hello! Even my skepticism is not unique! Doubt is universal! I’m not the only one stewing in unanswerable questions. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably guilty of same. (The rest are too busy getting and spending to wonder what it’s all about.)
Whatever humility I’ve experienced, perhaps just the wisdom of aging, reminds me that I am not unique. Other people know the dark feelings that have moved through me, often to a greater extreme. I’ve had brief spells of depression but never felt the suicidal urge that doomed Virginia Woolf and countless others. I’ve jumped for joy but never experienced the ecstasy known to Indian gurus and Christian mystics.
I can report the same on the physical level: I’ve lived with joint pain but never higher than an “8” out of 10. I’ve suffered chronic illness but never been completely debilitated. I’ve had a hip replaced by doctors who’ve honed their skills doing the same surgery for thousands of others just like me.
On all fronts, I’ve benefited enormously from the healing powers of yoga, the DYI path to rebalancing the prana (energy, life force), revitalizing the body, and recalibrating the mind.
Perhaps being swayed by the yogis’ conviction that we are capable of healing—and feeling the evidence of that in my own life—led to my first and greatest surrender of terminal uniqueness. If yoga is working for you too, welcome to the human race! If it’s not, reach out to me and we’ll find the onramp that works for you. Because no one is that unique!:)
