Common Lie Told

Do you have a signature style? Quirks and foibles? Are you on a unique life journey? The path you choose is likely to be the same beaten, traveled and eroded path many others have trekked before you. A prominent lie in contemporary life is that each individual person is special, concealing the uniform homogenous truth of life.

This lie is told to children from the very start of their lives. It is engraved into the child’s mind by parents, teachers, even the media and society. Parents teach their little superstar child that there is no body quite like them. This white lie is prevalent in the media. For example, the song, You Are Special, from the television show of Barney, celebrates with happy singing children how, “You're the only one like you, there isn't another in the whole wide world, who can do the things you do.” So why shouldn’t parents also endorse this? In kindergarten children make projects to express their individuality, but if everyone is unique then how is any human being different from another? In modern society many sporting competitions are also influenced by this lie. Often, any child who participates in sports receives a trophy—wouldn’t want any child to feel common—eliminating the concept of winners and losers, which slowly assimilates children’s accomplishments into one medley of monotony. This lie is told to us by those we trust, persuading us that we are important. It is an excuse to accomplish anything uniquely momentous, because, if one is born special why have ambition to differentiate yourself. The people who tell this lie are not intending to be malicious with the outcome. The purpose of this lie is to make one feel better about their mundane similarity to the average human being. In the essay by Stephanie Erikson, she describes the white lie and how it shadows the dreary truth of our normality with a deceitful lie. This explains why we so willingly believe the lie that we are special because humans would much rather feel unique