What It Means to Be Special

I just watched a video titled "End Credits to Humanity" by Tim Hickson, which he uploaded to his YouTube channel, "Hello Future Me." I've included a link, because the whole video is worth watching, if a bit weird in some places, but toward the middle of the video, there's a profound moment where the main character muses on how special humanity is/was (the story takes place far in the future), despite sometimes thinking that we're nothing special. And that got me thinking about what makes things special and how things have meaning both because we give things meaning and because they mean something to us.

For example, I'm writing words. Now, I could start typing random keys, creating strings of gibberish interspersed with a space or two here or there, but that wouldn't mean anything. I'm giving these symbols meaning by arranging them in deliberate ways, and they mean something to you when you read and interpret them. On their own, these symbols mean nothing. Just two dozen or so specific kinds of squiggles depicted on a page. Anyone who can't read English could look at these squiggles and figure that they must have meant something to someone (because otherwise, why create them?), but the squiggles would mean nothing to them. These "words" have no inherent meaning, but they mean something to me.

The same thing goes for being special. I sometimes feel like I'm no one special, but I know that there are people who think I am. I'm special to them, just as they are to me. We give ourselves and each other meaning by meaning something to ourselves and each other.

We can give anything meaning this way. We can make anything special and meaningful (at least to us), so long as they are special and meaningful to us. Life itself has meaning, if only because we give it meaning. God is special because we believe in Him, and He makes us special by believing in us. Life is wonderful because we find wonder in it. The world is beautiful because we see its beauty. Our beliefs give things meaning, and we can make things special just by believing that they are.