A synthetic kind of special

Elizabeth grew up in a rather large house with very nice furniture and a purebred dog. But don't be drawn to the obvious conclusion. She was not mainstream. A fiercely original character, standing out amidst the generic run of SUV-driving, Abercrombie-clad products of Nuevo-riche suburbia -- she was different. She spat at mainstream film and music, railed against American foreign policy. Her favorite word was "organic." Her least favorite, "corporate." Yes, indeed, Elizabeth was like no one else I've ever met in college. And while I can't say that I agreed with all of her convictions, she held to them strongly with, well, conviction. \nBut there was one opinion of Elizabeth's that never coincided with the rest. \nShe hated Tom Hanks. \nViolently abhorred the man. \n"What possible justification could there be (aside from "Joe vs. The Volcano") for hating Tom Hanks?" one might ask. After all, he surely seems to be just a normal guy. Yet this was precisely her justification. "Tom Hanks tries too hard to be the everyday man," I believe was the exact quote. For those of you who feel compelled to dive an unhealthy depth into the implications of that statement, don't bother. The point is not Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, as far as any of us knows, is a nice guy and a good actor. Unless he beat your dog to death with his two Oscars, there's no reason to dislike him. Period. \nThe point is, that in all reality, Elizabeth was one of the most uninteresting people I have ever met. Nothing she ever said, free of a forcedly controversial nature, lingered in my mind. She was boring, and I think she knew this. So to compensate for it, she proudly spurted out aggressively contrived and insincere opinions such as this, solely for the sake of being viewed as different. Elizabeth was also an extremely kind person who would never hurt a fly. But there are countless kind people in this world, and she wanted to be special. We all want to be special. We're told countless times as children that everybody is, in fact, special in his or her own way. It just seems that too many of us feel that our own kind of special is rather lame or, paradoxically, rather generic. \nEventually, we realize that we can't all be rock stars, so we craft a synthetic kind of special so that we might impress people enough for them to at least think that we could be. We sell things that aren't us to be accepted as someone that we'd perhaps rather be. But that's not only bait and switch, it's conducting ourselves in a manner contrary to the way in which human beings are meant to run. \nWe don't function properly when fueled by glorifications or alterations of ourselves. My name is Hans, and I run only on Hans Grade Gasoline. \nThe point is an embarrassingly simple and (how delightfully ironic) unoriginal one, best stated by the bard as "to thine own self be true."\nThough it could be far less articulately summed up as, "Anyone who expects you to impress them doesn't really care about you, so don't waste your time."\nTo return to Elizabeth, Tom Hanks didn't change anything about her true self. She was still boring -- boring as hell. But perhaps that's exactly what everyone loved about her. It was part of her charm.\nIn fact, it's what made her so very, very special.