If You Put Us "Side by Each" Are We "Same Each Alike"?

I’ve always heard that no is indispensable. None of us really have the corner market on anything. We are, as the song says, “Dust in the Wind”. Here today and gone tomorrow. We are just one more of someone’s “old photos” that will be discarded someday because there is no one left who remembers who we are.

As sad as it sounds, I am ok with that. My childhood goal of wanting my name in the World Book Encyclopedia has long passed and I have come to a point of acceptance that I will never be famous. And yes, Virginia, even I will someday die.

The thing I’m not ok with is the recent realization that there is nothing special about me. On my job, I’m a provider and a nurse, and I’m seen as interchangeable by the people at the top. I’m not “me”, I’m a title or a job description. There is nothing that I bring to my work that is seen as different from what anyone else brings to theirs. I’m a faceless machine here to do the bidding of the powers that be, who are also probably faceless machines to those above them.

I guess I could learn to accept my faceless role at work but apparently it doesn’t just stop there. It occurs even with those I care about and who I assumed care about me. I guess it is my tendency toward narcissism that brought about my belief that I am special to other people, or at least to the one's I love.

Today I’ll try to see each person, those I love and those who are just people who cross my path, as someone special. I’m sure I’m as guilty as anyone else at seeing people as “interchangeable”. I want when you put them “side by each” to have them NOT be “same each alike”.