It’s not poverty or failure or loss that we fear most.  I think our greatest fear is being unremarkable.

Of course being remarkable has all sorts of benefits:  attention and love from friends and family, success in business, opportunities to influence, potential for leadership, and the power to change.  Being unremarkable means that you are forced into drama to get love and attention in relationships, commoditization in business,  and few opportunities to lead, influence and change.  I’ll take being remarkable over being unremarkable any day.

I have never watched American Idol.  It’s not because I hover above all of you easily entertained masses.  It’s because we don’t own a TV.   Yet I know some of the names from the show and have a rough idea of what is going on because people talk about it…on CNN, on DIGG, on the radio, in the grocery store line, etc.  Idol is unavoidable in my world because it is remarkable.

People slam “American Idol,” for a lot of legitimate reasons (it’s exploitative, humiliating, cheap, lowbrow, etc.), but I think the show teaches a great lesson:  it doesn’t take talent to be remarkable.  From the YouTube clips I’ve seen, most of the contestants are so-so performers at best.   What makes them and the show remarkable are their stories.  The ugly lady who sings like an angel, the young guy whose sexuality is ambiguous…we talk about these people.   We don’t talk about their talents, we talk about them by recounting their stories.

If you are a friend of mine and you tell someone about me, I’m sure you have a story that goes along with it.  That story can be simple, like, “she is a nurse,” or it can be complicated like, “she treats burn victims in the ER.”  “He owns a business,” or, “he started his business after a trek through the Brazilian rain forest and donates half his profit to saving the forest.”    The difference is in personal expression…in the story we tell ourselves and others.  It’s not just verbal, it’s in everything:  it’s in the design of our showrooms, the way we do our hair, and the car(s) that we drive.

One more thing:  authenticity counts for a lot here.  Stories that are fake or contrived or too polished don’t spread.  They aren’t remarkable.  When something is too over the top, or screems “look at me,” too loudly, you become remarkable for trying to be remarkable.