Achievement, ambition, purpose, goals, skill sets. The great buzzword that the entire human civilization is built upon. From ancient kings carving up their names to ordinary people curating their online Instagram identity today, we have always chased something: the feeling of being special, the feeling of being somebody.
Life might look different when looked at from the outside, but the inner pursuit to be special, to be somebody, remains. Often, seemingly opposite dualities, surface-level appearance has the same underlying psychological need: to be special.
The ambitious man says, “I live for achievement.”
The unambitious man says, “I don’t need to achieve anything.”
And in both cases, each asserts the identity: I am special, one because he is ambitious, the other because he is not.
The strong says, “I am powerful, I am unbreakable.”
The fragile one says, “I am sensitive, deep, and vulnerable.”
The spiritual man says, “I have transcended worldly needs.”
The materialistic man says, “I embrace worldly desire.”
The celibate monk says, “I am special because I have vowed to stay away from sexuality for life.”
The Playboy seducer says, “I am great because sexuality is my mastery.”
The good person says, “I am morally right, kind, virtuous.”
The bad person says, “I am special because I don’t care about being morally right.”
The point of real spiritual revolution that I speak of, real awakening that I point to, is to recognize the underlying current in all these pursuits, and all these identification has one and one goal: to feel special in some way; in any way possible. So, for this, the clinging to identity, in fact, any identity, to feel special in some way, in any way possible. Let’s try to understand this by taking the example of the good person and the bad person. We have to look beneath the story, beneath the identities.
A person who tries to be good does not simply exist as good. They work towards being good, relentlessly. They conform, adjust, shape themselves to fit to an image of “what a good person should be.” They follow any code: religious, cultural, or moral code of conduct. They keep on pushing themselves. “I have to be a good person.” They see that their goodness is a way they are significant in this entire universe, and they can proudly say they are a ‘good’ person. So this relentless chase to be a good person is how they want to be special.
And the same mechanism exists in the so-called “bad person”: the one who tries to remain rebellious, ruthless, cold, and unapologetic. They, too, are following a code. They, too, are constructing a self-image that makes them feel powerful, different, untouchable. They take pride in rejecting norms just as the good person takes pride in embracing them. Their internal dialogue is: “I don’t care, I take what I want, I don’t pretend to be good.” Their darkness gives them identity in the exact same way goodness gives the other person identity.
Two different roles, two different performances, two different values, two different expressions, but one is admired by society and the other is resented or feared. But psychologically, both are trying very hard to be seen, to assert their specialness. The good person needs to be good, and the bad person needs to be bad. Both are terrified that if they stop their performance, they will not be special anymore. And the same logic applies to all personalities, all identities.
So I ask you this question, the most fundamental one: What if you don’t have to be special? You don’t have to be anything at all. You don’t have to be a fixed identity of a person. And what if someone asks you who you are, and all you can say is: “I don’t know.” And what if you permit yourself to be everything life has to offer, truly a mess of a human being? What if you give yourself permission to be sad, angry, good, bad, indecisive, guilty, shameful, happy, joyful, blissful, celibate, sexual, introvert, extrovert, leader, follower, superior, inferior, right, wrong, love, hate, healthy, unhealthy, and millions of things that you encounter in yourself from the very very darkness of yourself to your most caring gentle thoughts. What if you give yourself permission to be contradictory; that one moment you are bursting with anger, and another moment you are dancing in joy? What if I tell you, you don’t have to be consistent at all?
This question is terrifying, isn’t it? To even think in such a way, to even give yourself a chance to consider this, is terrifying.
The Origin of Becoming Special: Family
Here are two hypothetical stories of how two children. One child grows up to become a “taker”- the person who is always taking, demanding, extracting, and exploiting the world and people around him. And another child grows up to become a “giver” – the person who is always giving, not being able to say no, self-sacrificing, for the sake of the world and the people around him. So one is special because he is a taker, and another is special because he is a giver.
The Taker: There was a woman who was a people-pleaser. She loved to give, to feel useful, and she derived her worth from being needed. Then she became a mother. Over the years, the child silently learned the emotional rules of the home: whenever he demanded attention or needed something from her, she lit up: she felt important, fulfilled. So he absorbed the lesson: when I take from her, she is happy. And obviously, the child is innocent, and he tried the opposite; he tried to give her back, care for her, and appreciate her. But each time he tried this, his mother felt very uncomfortable, because she did not believe that she could be cared for. And in this discomfort, she withdrew. So he registered her distancing not as a coincidence, but as a survival rule. He learned: If I demand and take, I receive love. If I give, I am pushed away. From this, a personality formed. He became the one who takes, who expects, who never gives back: not out of selfishness, but because taking became his strategy for getting loved. An identity crystallized around it: I get love by taking, and if I stop taking, I will lose love.
The Giver: There was another woman, who was the opposite of the above story, projecting self-sufficiency, controlling, demanding, and showing strength. She became a mother. Over the years, the child noticed the pattern: when he is quiet, helpful, and undemanding, she is relaxed, affectionate. But again, the child is innocent, and many times he would cry, demand attention, need support, and immediately he saw his mother getting anxious and distant. His needs overwhelmed her, so she withdrew. So the child learnt: If I give, I am loved. If I need anything, I am rejected. So he grew up to be the caretaker, the pleaser, the one who supports everyone but never needs anything himself. His specialness is: he is a giver, useful, selfless, and non-burdensome.
These two opposite stories show how the need to be special, the need for a fixed personality, begins in childhood inside the family. They are simple examples to understand how children learn and shape themselves very early. A child studies the emotional atmosphere of the home and discovers, without ever thinking about it, which version of themselves brings love and which version brings distance. From there, the child holds on to a certain personality (a specialness), not because it is their true nature, but because that is how connection is accessible. So personality becomes a method, a strategy, a way of surviving connection. The child learns, if I am this, I am loved… if I am not this, I am rejected. And that becomes the foundation of how they relate to people for the rest of their lives, by clinging to the personality that once protected them.
The self-help or mental-health world calls this “childhood trauma.” But here I am making the definition more precise: childhood trauma is not only the painful things that happened to the child, but the identity the child was forced to build in order to feel connected to the parents. Trauma is when the child learns, I cannot be myself, I must become something special to feel connected.
The Drums of Society
The need to be special, to be extraordinary, is not just personal. It is the foundation of society. Everything is organized like a race. Everything pushes you toward the same idea: become somebody, prove yourself, stand out, rise above the rest.
In school, study hard, get the highest marks, come first, and be excellent. Exams are the first competition. Children learn very early that their value depends on how they perform compared to others.
Then the competition just changes in shape. In adulthood, the exams become money, career, power, status, and beauty. Society creates a system where everyone is trying to be better than everyone else, hoping that if they reach the top, they will finally feel special.
Sports are the same formula. Competition is glorified as entertainment, but underneath it is the same message: only the winner matters. Only the champion is special.
And maybe the most unfortunate arena is dating and marriage. Even love has become a marketplace. Men are told how to act and what to achieve to be “man enough.” Women are told how to look and how to behave to be “woman enough.” Same competition, same race.
The Madness
To even ask the question “What if you don’t have to be special?” is terrifying, isn’t it?
Because the whole world around you is beating the same drum in perfect rhythm: be special, be someone, don’t be ordinary. Keep running around to prove that you are special, you are worthy. And if you don’t join the race, if you don’t play the same game, society immediately labels you as an outsider, you don’t fit in, you don’t belong. And the fear of not belonging, of not fitting, is terrifying.
But maybe the fear of not belonging in society is still manageable. Maybe you could live with being the outsider there. But then comes something much closer, much more personal: connection, dating, marriage, friendships, and the way you relate to people. This is where it becomes almost impossible to escape. Because the way we connect to others is almost always through our personality, through our learned psychological specialness.
The compulsive giver will keep seeking someone who constantly takes. Not because it is healthy, not because it is logical, but because that dynamic keeps his identity intact. That is how he stays “himself.” The compulsive taker looks for someone who gives endlessly, because without that pattern, he doesn’t know who he is. The compulsive leader always finds someone who prefers to follow. The compulsive follower always finds someone who needs to lead.
Everyone finds people around them who allow them to keep being the “special version” they built in childhood. And on the surface, this might sound like something simple, well-known psychology. But the truth is, most of us, including me, have no idea how deep these patterns run within. You simply gather people around you, attracted to a certain type of people, certain dynamics, and you think this is just fate. But in reality, we often unconsciously gather people around ourselves to protect our personality, identity, specialness, and the story we built in childhood.
The Fear
The question is terrifying because when you sit under a tree, the tree does not grade you for all the competitions you’ve been running. And the passing cat looks at you like you are just another ordinary human among thousands she has seen. Nothing about you is special in her eyes. And that is frightening.
Because behind this lies the real question: Who am I if I am not the story I tell myself? Not the personality I built? Not the identity I created in childhood just to survive an environment that no longer exists? Who am I then?
What if I simply let go of this story, this need to be special in any way, then everything I have built around, friendship, relationship, everything falls apart.
This reminds me of the quote by Alan Watts: “The real fear is not that love will abandon you. The real fear is that love will be the death of who you think you are, who you are pretending to be.”
And it is the most terrifying feeling in life, when all you have known your whole life is to give, but someone comes, life comes and tells you, take this gift, take this opportunity, take this smile, for free, I am giving you, take it. Your whole body trembles, thinking you can’t take this, you are not this, you don’t deserve this.
It is terrifying for someone who has said yes their whole life, because that was their specialness: to be agreeable, helpful, accommodating. The first time they say no, their whole body screams: You are guilty. You can’t do this. Everyone will be disappointed. The fear is not about the situation; it’s about violating the personality that once kept them safe.
It is equally terrifying for someone who has lived their whole life being insensitive, guarded to suddenly be soft and vulnerable. And it is just as terrifying for someone who has lived their whole life being sensitive, caring about others’ emotions, to for once stop feeling others, and be a little insensitive.
And all this feels like death, a real psychological death.
Because asking the question “What if I don’t need to be special?” requires a terrifying trust, trusting life, trusting people, trusting that you will still be connected, not in the way you know, but maybe in some other way or form if you are simply humane, messy, clumsy, real, and whatever you are in that moment.
The Awakening
In the spiritual pursuit, the search for love, truth, meditation, and self-knowing, we often approach it with the same mindset we learned from society. We think it is another competition, another achievement, another way to become special. I also believed this. I thought spirituality would make a person superior, different, extraordinary. That belief itself was just a reflection of the same old conditioning: whatever we do, even spirituality, must somehow make us special.
And I could not have been more wrong.
To be “special” means to stand on a stage, separated from others, untouchable, unreachable. It looks grand from the outside, but the inner experience of specialness is deeply lonely and disconnected. Being extraordinary means you cannot sit with people anymore; you must stay above them. And who truly wants that?
When I asked myself honestly, I realized I don’t actually want to be special. I want to be ordinary. And in that realization came another discovery: I am already ordinary. I don’t need to work for it. I don’t need to meditate for it. I don’t need to improve myself to become ordinary. I already am.
So the falsehood of spiritual pursuit is the belief that we must become something, enlightened, awakened, pure, high, superior. But the real awakening is seeing that there is nothing to become. We are human. We are ordinary. Even if it’s not perfect, that’s ok. And this seeing is terrifying.
Now maybe I am starting to understand in glimpses of Osho’s word:
“The real sage is not an enlightened person sitting at the top of a mountain condemning people, telling them right or wrong. The real sage is so human, so real, that he is a friend, and at most, a companion.”
And here is the deeper mess: we should be special – it is the ache in every one of us to feel unique in our own ways, and we can be not-special – ordinary too, belonging because we breathe.
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