The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
— Thomas Hardy, “Proud Songsters”
Out of the undifferentiated substratum of quarks that make a few different types of atoms, out of a few different chemical elements, everything springs forth. A myriad unique individual entities appear and begin inhabiting this huge expanse of Space and Time that we call the universe. And everything, absolutely everything in this universe, is unique: every pebble on the beach, every blade of grass, every plant, tree, insect, worm, every reptile and mammal, every human. And each and every one of these unique existents appears in its unique form, and in the unique evolution of its form and in the unique activities and expression of its being, only once in the universe. And it will never again appear in the universe in the exact same manner, or behave, act, express itself in the exact same way. Each existent of creation, past, present, and future, is an absolute uniqueness! For each existent was never before created in the exact same form it came-to-be, and will never again be repeated in this exact form. Even if it were magically to appear in the same exact form, at some different time in Eternity, still, its activities would be different and immersed in a different world. For every movement, every activity of every animate and inanimate existent is also unique. Every stone that rolls, every tree leaf that now sways, every insect that buzzes through the air, every animal that hunts for food and mates and raises its offspring in every corner of the planet, is acting in a unique manner that has never before happened in this exact way and will never again be repeated.
And, of course, you are unique! You are a unique expression of the Creation. A unique convergence of circumstance. You are one of the latest productions of the universe. A fresh, brand-new creation—just like the birds of Thomas Hardy in the poem above. There may be myriad others on this planet, indeed on other planets in other solar systems and galaxies, but none are like you. Even if all your qualities are shared by others, yet all of them together, in this special form, combination, character that constitutes your makeup, are a unique composition that has appeared here and now for the first time in the history of the universe. Let others place you in all sorts of boxes: blonde, female, young, athletic, disciplined or undisciplined. You are one of a kind. A category of one. A unique creature formed of inanimate and animate elements, the product of the biological and historical evolution of mankind, of the cultural circumstances that caused your being to spring forth out of nonbeing. That you exist is a miracle. That your existence is unique is an even bigger miracle.
Truly realizing your uniqueness is mind-blowing! A great wave of responsibility overwhelms you. You are this unique being that is called to think, act, move, create—in short, be—in your own unique way. You have the ability to express your uniqueness in extraordinary ways that have never before appeared in the universe. You may consider this to be a kind of calling to which you may or may not act responsibly. What are you here for? Why has Nature endowed you with these unique specific qualities that you have? What are you to do with them? These are the central questions of life. How you respond to them will reveal to you what I have come to call your life’s main highway. All else is trifling.
But some may assert that the ubiquity of uniqueness makes it commonplace, and therefore there’s nothing special about it. Just as all grains of sands are unique but commonplace, so too is there nothing necessarily special in being one of the myriad human beings that have existed or will come to exist. Our uniqueness, by being “a natural given,” and in a sense self-evident, in and of itself does not make us anything special. It is simply a quality of every existent. In a nutshell: if your uniqueness qua uniqueness is shared by all others, it is nothing special.
Well, as it happens, this argument hides a logical fallacy rooted in language itself: the categorization of things into a group by common quality does not make each of these things identical to all others in the group. Four and eight are numbers but that does not make them the same. Their quality qua numbers is simply a prerequisite for us to compare them and make meaningful statements about them, such as eight is larger than four, or four plus eight equals twelve. We could never compare, say, a number to a color: ask which is bigger, a four or brown?! It is a prerequisite to categorize before we are able to compare things and talk about them in a meaningful way. The fact that we all belong to the category of “unique” does not make us “the same.” You are unique just as each number is a unique member of the family of numbers, and just as each color is unique yet belongs to a spectrum of colors. The abstract concept of uniqueness does not annul the real uniqueness of Being. Your uniqueness qua uniqueness, just as your humanity, is shared with all other people and constitutes the common template upon which you are called to differentiate yourself by creating your own unique path. We could even go further and suggest that we should be humbled by the fact that uniqueness qua uniqueness is not unique: you are unique, just as each and every other human is unique.
Of all the hymns to the uniqueness of Man, my favorite is one by Yogi Ramacharaka. In it, he imagines a spiritual guide taking someone on a cosmic tour of the multiple physical and spiritual planes of the universe:
“But,” continued your guide, “beyond your plane and beyond mine are plane after plane, connected with our earth, the splendors of which man cannot conceive. And there are likewise many planes around the other planets of our chain—and there are millions of other worlds—and there are chains of universes just as there are chains of planets—and then greater groups of these chains—and so on greater and grander, beyond the power of man to imagine—on and on and on and on, higher and higher to inconceivable heights. An infinity of infinities of worlds are before us. Our world and our planetary chain and our system of suns, and our systems of solar systems, are but as grains of sand on the beach.”
“Then what am I—poor mortal thing—lost among all this inconceivable greatness,” you cried. “You are the most precious thing—a living soul,” replied your guide, “and if you were destroyed the whole system of universes would crumble, for you are as necessary as the greatest part of it—it cannot do without you—you cannot be lost or destroyed—you are part of it all, and are eternal.”
You are not a “poor mortal thing.” You are a most precious, special, and unique creation. Express your uniqueness in the most extraordinary manner you are capable of.