There is one thing about getting older that may just make up for what we lose when our youth slips away from us and that is we get to know ourselves better. I remember always trying to find myself, or more to the point, trying to find where I belong or what I’m supposed to be doing in this world. I remember vividly wanting to become famous, or rich, or rich and famous, or maybe be like someone that I idolized or admired.

I was always trying to become something that never quite set well with the way I felt about things. I knew what I wanted to become because I had people to model myself after. All I had to do to become what I wanted to be was to act just like the people I idolized. It’s a simple formula. I’m sure a lot of rich and famous people became rich and famous following that simple formula, but it never suited me.

I never did well being a phony. I really tried, but I never had the heart to carry it to a point where it bore any fruit. You see, I didn’t like myself so I tried to be like someone I admired. The trouble was, and in my heart I knew this, I wasn’t like the people I idolized. I was just plain old Paul…an ordinary old Paul. There was nothing special about me.

A girl once told me I was just a nice funny guy. I was offended when she said that. Nice? Funny? Man, what a legacy that is. I was offended because that girl knew me better than I allowed myself to know myself. I had to be better than nice and funny…I had to…I was special. What is the use of living if we can’t be special? How can we live day after day in the land of the ordinary when we see the rich and famous living our make-believe lives? There has to be more to life than living to be ordinary.

This is how I thought. These questions among others drove my existence. I wasn’t about to live an ordinary life…and I didn’t. I didn’t become rich or famous either. What I became was me. It was the same me I had known (and hated) my whole life. What I became was what I always had been. What I became was just what that girl said I was…a nice funny guy. What I didn’t pick up on for the longest time was that that girl liked me. She liked what I was and who I was. I didn’t like her because she saw me as I really was and not as what I was pretending to be. Now try to follow this…I didn’t like her because she liked the real me which I didn’t like but she did. Is that screwed up or what?

What I learned with age (and what that girl knew from the beginning) was that being me is special. Every situation I encountered gave me a new piece of the puzzle which turned out to be me. My actions and decisions that came with each situation that I encountered defined me to myself. I learned to love myself. I didn’t lower the bar to sooth my ego when I didn’t become what I thought I should be. I genuinely found that fame and fortune do not make a person special. To me, how we would handle fame and fortune might make us special, but money and fame are as fleeting as a child’s wants.

What I learned is that there are no ordinary lives unless we purposely make them that way. What makes our lives ordinary is that we try to be something we are not. We idolize someone and try to become what they are and we cheapen ourselves to a mirror image of someone else. Who we idolize might very well be a special person, but they certainly aren’t us. Who could possibly be more special than the one of kind you…or me? Follow your heart and be true to it at all times and your life will not be ordinary. How could it be? It is, after all, your life.

Hello, my name is Paul and I’m a nice funny guy.