5. e 最浪费时间的错觉——我是独一无二的

Make Time Your Friend 5.e: The Most Time-Wasting Illusion: I Am Unique

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113101606/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/444.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Almost all inspirational books tell readers, as if preaching, "You are unique!" (You are unique! Everybody is unique!) Usually these books quote a passage from Amram Scheinfeld's (阿姆拉姆•善菲尔德) famous *You and Heredity* (《你与遗传》) (You and Heredity):

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: a passage as cited in inspirational books; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] You are the result of forty-six chromosomes combining with one another, twenty-three from your father and twenty-three from your mother. Each chromosome contains hundreds of genes, and each gene can change your whole life. Given the combination of your parents' chromosomes, the probability of your being formed as you are now is one in thirty zhao [Translator's note: 兆 here is used in the sense of "trillion" (10¹²), i.e., one in thirty trillion; in mainland usage 兆 can also mean "million"].

Then they go on to extend it:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: the inspirational books' own extension; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] Therefore, we really are an "incredible, extremely wonderful" combination. Because even if you had thirty trillion brothers and sisters, they would still differ from you; you are still unique.

I remember that when I first heard this claim back then, I too got thoroughly worked up for a while, and afterward, of course, like many people, bitterly complained about this unfair world—why give unique me a fate exactly the same as everyone else's?! Then, recalling a passage from one of Wang Shuo's (王朔) stories, "……I know I come from somewhere. Walking among [Translator's note: the original writes 当众 ("in public"); 当中 ("among") is meant; translated by the intended sense] the teeming multitudes, this feeling is especially strong……", I got goosebumps all over several times.

However, the year I was 26, when I had my great awakening, I carefully examined the creeds I had once believed. "I am unique" was one of those that made me laugh despite myself. Apart from misleading me, this creed never had any positive effect. On the contrary, I may even have wasted a great deal of time because of it—because such a thought most easily sets a person daydreaming, and so idling away time and accomplishing nothing.

Using "I am unique" as a creed to motivate yourself to work hard is obviously absurd. You don't even need scientific proof to know that "being unique" is a definite fact, but this is often a fact utterly irrelevant to success. If everyone has five fingers on each hand, and I happen to have a gene mutation so that my right hand has an extra finger—"six fingers" (hypothetically), so what? Would I become a billionaire because of it, or a great figure who changes the world? I searched for ages, and among the great figures I know there really isn't one with six fingers, except the "Six-Fingered Zither Demon" in Ni Kuang's (倪匡) novels.

If "I am unique" is used as a reason to stop feeling inferior, that's even more pitiful—to what degree must a person feel inferior before he thinks of using such an obvious fact as a last shield? Actually, "feeling inferior normally when you should feel inferior" is the precondition for "feeling confident normally when you should feel confident." Don't understand "feeling inferior" as a negative word; it's just a normal state of mind. If you don't feel inferior when you should, that's called "not knowing yourself"; if, when you should feel inferior, you instead, in a distorted way, appear or even really feel confident, what others see is just "a conceited fool."

Actually, citing the fact that "the arrangements and combinations of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes have thirty trillion possibilities" can, and can only, prove one thing completely: each person is unique in physiological terms—it doesn't seem to prove anything else. Real life will use all sorts of weird methods to make you exactly the same as everyone else. The people squeezing onto a bus are men and women, old and young, tall and short, fat and thin, all different, but so what? They have to endure the same crowding, the same odors, the same irritation. In the instant of standing in line at a bank window, everyone is again men and women, old and young, tall and short, fat and thin, all different, but they must wait by the same rules.

Sometimes a friend comes to ask me for advice. So, after confirming that he really does want to hear my advice, I'll say what I think. However, after laying out a concrete, detailed plan, eight times out of ten I'll see this reaction: "What you say is really right, but my own situation is rather special……" Generally, I know then that I should shut up. Because countless facts have proven that once a person thinks his situation is rather special, he may, in essence, never be able to accept others' advice. And the few people I've seen who didn't say "my own situation is rather special" often corrected their own behavior quickly.

**Accepting that you are no different from others, at least not essentially different, is one of the important preconditions for the mind to grow normally.** So I often tell myself, "You are not alone." When I run into some trouble, I say this to myself, telling myself that I'm not the only one who has run into such trouble, so I just need to find a way to look for a solution—quite possibly someone long ago put a good solution into words and left it somewhere. When I meet some unexpected pleasant surprise, I still say this to myself, telling myself that I'm not the only one who has met such so-called luck, so I should be happy about it, but there's no need to be overjoyed to the point of losing my composure.

The frog at the bottom of the well can't possibly know that this world has many other wells, no different from the one it's in. They may be big wells, may be small wells; the mouths may be square, may be round, but one thing is the same, and crucial: the depth of these wells is a depth the frog can't jump out of. So the frog at the bottom of the well is even less likely to know that in other wells there may be frogs exactly like it, maybe a bit bigger, maybe a bit smaller; nor can it (they) know that that frog (those frogs) has exactly the same thoughts as itself—although, from a minute angle, it may be unique, not a 100% identical frog.

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