#ask polly

Life is so much easier once you lose the belief that you’re special. It’s easier to see how special everyone else is, which is interesting and relaxing and makes everything more enjoyable. Being alone in your specialness, wanting the world to match you, is unbearably lonely and alienating. It’s like asking the sky to mimic your crude drawing of the sky: You are making the world more primitive and flat when you ask it to echo your thoughts, to keep you comfortable, to never contradict or challenge you. This world was built to step to you, to throw you into conflict with yourself. The suffering outside your door demands that you clarify your principles. When you reject that challenge, you turn your back on the opportunity to grow into something bigger and brighter than you are. Welcoming discomfort transforms you. Hiding from discontent and awkwardness makes you sad and small — or monstrous and disturbed.