“You are not special,” David McCullough Jr. said in a commencement speak given for Wellesey High School’s 2012 graduation. He continues to counter the modern culture of commending children and adolescents for accomplishing what he considers to be goals dwarfed by the earth’s population and overarching span of our lives. To some, this may seem a caustic speech to give graduating seniors about to go off to college and challenge the world; however, to me, this is a striking image which I whole heartedly enjoy. His thesis, once you get down to it, is how we should always seize our opportunities as they present themselves because the “pursuit” in “pursuit of happiness” means action, and no one became remarkable for lazing about.
Still, one might question how this plays in the minds of the young adults he’s speaking to. Is it too harsh? I would say no. For one, adolescents enter a phenomena called adolescent egocentrism, defined as the state of believing the world is centered on their actions and how they go about their actions. It is also called the personal fable, which gives it a sort of mythologic feel in the sense that these adolescents are making themselves out to be a Hercules. McCullough seeks to pull this out from under the feet of the graduate and instead urges them to seek their identity in the world, mirroring Erikson’s Stages of Psychological Development.
psywithsteph 
I have to say this statement of you are not special really sort of bothers me. I understand that in today’s day and age some individualistic features seem to be fading in the way that people are always comparing actions to others. I mean if you were to compare your life to say Mozart’s where he was writing music by the age of four then yes you may not seem as special, but I like to take the writer’s perspective. Now he talks about how you are not the hero of your own personal Fable and honestly I sort of find it hard to believe. I mean everyone has a story where they came from, where they are, and the most mysterious story of where they are going. Who can tell you that you aren’t the hero of your very own story? How would they know? No everyone has their own personal story and each one is special unlike any other. There are hardships, losses, tragedies, and yet there is love, there is peace, and there is hope. Each story is different although some are not as exciting as others, it is after all up to the writer to decide the excitement and direction of the tale. So that is the theory that I claim, each one of us is a writer in his own story. It is up to us to decide where the story will go, and while there are plenty of plot twists and unpredictable changes that will occur it is again up to us as the writer to decide what happens after those events. Will we allow the loss to take its grand toll on the protagonist leading to a tragic finale, or will the hero overcome the loss and make his claim on life that is up to us to decide and might I say that sounds pretty special to me.
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