Being the same as everyone else

In a world where so many things make us feel other, can we still accept that we are the same

The only thing I want more than to be different from everyone else is to be the same– or depending on the day you ask me, I might state the inverse. This being another complex sentiment I write in my journal often, as if its a feeling that eludes even my own understanding.

I have been practicing yoga since my early 20s, and I’ve always attended classes with people much older than me. The Iyengar lineage and its gentler and more alignment focused classes appealing to people in their 60s and 70s, but to my scoliosis too. Most of the time I’ve really appreciated this and it’s complimented an old soul capacity within me, but sometimes it makes me feel “other". I’ve found an incredible Iyengar studio here in Boulder and I don’t even attend the regular classes as much as the designated “gentle” ones. I find though that even in this gentlest of gentle environments I still require modifications, and this week my teacher came over and fastened a yoga strap around my ribs as I was entering a heart opening pose. I’ve been dealing with a ribs injury related to lifting a piece of furniture years ago– its not even my ribs themselves as much as the tissue and organs deep underneath, I’m currently working with a massage therapist/healer on my spleen (more on all of this later). So having the new support of the strap to keep my ribs from overly splaying open felt potentially groundbreaking! But it’s bizarre for me to hold multiple truths at once– because while a part of me really loves the special attention of my teacher coming over and lovingly giving me my own custom pose, another part of me is mortified that I require modifications when somebody next to me who’s 70 years old doesn’t.

Additionally with my food allergies I think all the time that it would just be so nice if I could eat whatever I wanted and thus be “the same as everybody else”. But I listened to a podcast a couple of weeks ago where the person mused that allergies were perhaps born out of desire to be special– and it made me intensely uncomfortable because it felt like it could be true, like some stray fiber or essence of me had manifested my allergies to amass the extra degree of specialness. I’m still not sure what to do with this new consideration, but I’m mentioning it here as it seems a further case study of the special/like everybody else ongoing quandary.

Lastly, I struggle with the desire to spend copious amounts of time by myself and then the desire to be with others. I’m really excellent at being by myself– I have done elaborate solo road trips all over the country, I live alone, am a one woman design business, do the majority of my excursions solo. I pride myself on my independence, but the very omnipresent flip side of this equation is loneliness. I’ll go for a long time feeling pretty good, but then a period will arise where this amount of solo time feels really burdensome, and this week was one of those weeks. I made efforts to get out of the house every day, taking myself on lots of little field trips like coffee shops, the contemporary art museum, the farmers market, hikes. It didn’t feel like enough though, and I’m not entirely sure what to do about this. In general it can feel like this vague notion that everybody else might be doing life in a different way than I’m doing it, and I’m not sure my way is the best way.

But a couple pieces of solace– The Avett Brothers, one of my favorite folk groups, released new music recently and my favorite song on the album holds the lyric “I have felt alone, but I have never been” (the song is “We Are Loved”). I also cannot get over the devastating beauty of Celine Dion’s Olympics opening ceremonies performance. I’m a big fan of hers but haven’t followed along close enough in recent years to really know much about the depth of suffering she’s been going through or the complex neurological disorder that has kept her from performing. But watching her sing “Hymne à l'amour” I just sobbed because it was so pure. I felt like I could viscerally feel and understand every heartbreaking moment that she’s ever been through and how much it matters to her to be able to give that performance to the world.

So back to my original inquiry and in conclusion– if I am to choose between being different and being like everybody else, I choose being like everybody else. Because maybe what we are all experiencing, in our own ways, is some extent of otherness and loneliness and suffering. And so we are together, in that. And perhaps being together in some other capacity might seem more joyful and “positive”, but being together in the human experience of imperfection and brokenness seems the most real.