WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND YOUR OWN NAME IN THE TEXTBOOKS?

"You're one of a kind!" "You're an unrepeatable act!" "You're an exception!"

In recent American generations, commendations like these have been energizing and propelling the human spirit. Never more so than in the case of the boomer generation with their young. Ready cash, cars, clothes, curriculum, and summer camps have for years given them a sense of entitlement. An entitlement that now in this recession may be bumping into its very first: "Who says so!?"

Truth be known, though, almost all Americans think of themselves as exceptions. It's only in our later -- much later -- years that a remarkable suspicion dawns upon us. "Maybe I'm really not all that exceptional. Actually I'm rather textbook!" And therein lies a tale to be told.

As we first encounter them -- thoughts, feelings, urges, fears, shames, symptoms -- it's quite natural to deal with them as first-time-facts. After all, this is the first time I've had them, right?. What the happy ignorance of youth fails to report is that these exact same thoughts, feelings, urges, fears, shames and symptoms have been going on in the human species for millions of years. Philosophers like to call it the Human Condition. No one since the dawn of time has been exempted.

For those of an empirical bent, your confirmation is right there in your textbooks. Check it out. As the pollsters and authors report their results, notice the numbers. Those percentiles in which most people fit. Then check where you fit. Right! Virtually every time your thoughts, feelings, urges fears, shames and symptoms are very much the same as most people. You see, we're not so different after all.

That's the empiricism of it. But now what about the affect of it? In other words, just how do we feel about discovering we're not all that exceptional...?

There's no textbook data on that question. It's answered quite privately by each and every one of us. For some it's shattering. How can it be that with all my exceptionalism -- parents, home, schools, IPhones and computer centers -- I'm so very much like everyone else? Under a new president facing a new world, the same question is occurring to the American people about their nation.

For others, this realization is more freeing than shattering. For them there's something comforting about not bearing the burden of being so exceptional...so unique....so one of a kind. After all, what's so bad about going-with-flow, and finding all the others right there in the same flow with you...?