Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Space Oddity

All the best people are "odd". "Exceptional" is synonymous with "different", which is synomymous with "odd", if you think about it, so it just follows.
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The point is it simply depends upon viewpoint.
You can't be exceptional without being different. And you can't be different without some people regarding you as odd. So why care at all.
Name ten of the greatest names you can think of: I'll bet anything lots of people who knew them considered them odd.

4 comments:

Christopher said...

“Exceptional” carries a positive connotation of excellence; “different” has a neutral connotation (as in “she’s just different”); while “odd” carries a negative connotation of “not quite right”. The best among us are “exceptional”, not merely “different”, and certainly not “odd”. The best among us are committed to excellence as a rule; choose the ways in which we wish to be different; and remain sensitive to the appearance of being odd, caring enough to balance ourselves if we are.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

The point is it simply depends upon viewpoint.
You can't be exceptional without being different. And you can't be different without some people regarding you as odd. So why care at all.
Name ten of the greatest names you can think of: I'll bet anything lots of people who knew them considered them odd.

Christopher said...

I understand.

If I feel secure with being exceptional, and therefore different, then I would agree: why care that anyone would see me as odd?

Except ... when you take a look at those ten greatest names, you also tend to see a great deal of misery around feeling at odds.

What's going on here? Are these great ones caring too much about what others think of them? Or is there something more going on?

Christopher said...

Hint:

The important thing is not to stop questioning - Albert Einstein