I've been on a mini-quest to reject the concept of exceptionalism.

It started with an observation that everywhere we traveled seemed wonderful and fun, full of people who can't imagine living anywhere else. Every place[1] seems to have some thing that makes it feel special when you visit. If you live there, it's a different story, though. Sort of like how people who live in Philadelphia don't visit the Liberty Bell. Or there are only just so many times you can visit the museums in Washington DC before the daily routine of life breaks the spell.

I grew up in a rural town and worked pretty hard to find a job that would move me out of it. Having lived in a few major cities now, I can say that the place that you live doesn't have a lot of impact on how happy you can be. I was depressed when I lived in the middle of nowhere and I was depressed all over again shortly after moving to a big city. It wasn't until I started letting go of the concept of finding happiness through acquiring lifestyle markers that I started feeling whole.

And I've noticed this applies to pretty much everything. Everyone has a cherished childhood toy or video game or movie to which every new experience is compared. Everyone has a story about their university experience that ends with, "you just had to be there, it was a different time. The place was never the same after." Everyone has an in-the-trenches story about an old job.

But those experiences are apocryphal. Other people were having similar experiences with other things, repeated cookie-cutter across the world. The particular things they were experiencing may have even been better than what we experienced. But that's not why things are great. Our memories of the greatness of things are not a function of how good they were in comparison to other things, or how few people got to experience them as well. Our experience of greatness is a function of our being present in the moment, absorbing and making memories of the feelings we had. Why should the knowledge that some other folks experienced a better thing, or many other folks experienced the same thing we did, change how we feel about what happened to us? They can't go into the past and change events. We still have those memories of those feelings.

And then we die and it all evaporates. There will be mostly no record of the wonders we experienced. What little record will be stored and propagated will mostly go completely ignored. And what little that will be received will be misinterpreted.

This applies to everything. The Quest for The Best is a fallacy, as it presumes the ability to replay all choices in parallel universes and select the universe that has the best results (assuming we can even calculate what The Best even means). Yet so many people are consumed by finding The Best and rejecting everything else. It locks them into a cycle of indecision as they thrash over infinite options, causing an ever growing anxiety that feeds into itself.

Sound like anything? Arguing politics. Choosing a restaurant in a group. Choosing a meal once/if you ever get there. Choosing an application development framework. We choose to attempt to drink from the fire hose, then reinterpret it as drowning in a hurricane at sea when you could just remove your head from the fire hose stream.

Be resolute in accepting that you will die and that none of the struggle for anything beyond your own happiness, enjoyment, and completeness matters. You are free to choose what will compose your happiness. You have a place in life and it is your own place that you are free to enjoy, regardless of how unique or objectively great it might be.

Ironically, once you do that, you might even be able to achieve the clarity and focus of mind necessary to make a unique and great thing. Because you won't care, you'll just make the thing for your enjoyment.

[1] to which one would travel, granted. Old coal mining towns are just exercises in communal depression.