Creatively Eccentric
The Uniqueness of Each Person
It is true that everthing is related to everything else and that no one is an island. It is true that we are relational beings, emerging out of our felt connections. But it is also true that every person is unique. Every person is, in this sense, slightly eccentric.
By eccentric I do not mean bizarre, erratic, or socially unconventional—although such people certainly have their place in life. I mean that every person has a center—an experiential standpoint—that is different from every other person. Each is a unique and evolving center of experience, a novel togetherness of relations, who inherits the world and re-creates it in his or her own way.
Most eccentricity is quiet. It appears in the countless ways living beings become themselves rather than mere repetitions of what came before. It is present in every fresh perception, every new feeling, every unexpected thought, every act of kindness, and every creative response to the circumstances of life.
Occasionally, however, eccentricity becomes impossible to overlook. Then we give it a name. We call the person eccentric. Sometimes we add odd or unconventional or strange. We may laugh, admire, criticize, or imitate. But beneath our reactions lies a deeper truth: what we are witnessing is creativity made visible. The person's originality has become outwardly apparent. What is obvious in that person is, in quieter ways, true of us all.
None of us is entirely normal. Being "normal" is largely a matter of social convention and our conformity to it. We dress like other people, speak their language, observe familiar customs, adopt accepted manners, and often think within the assumptions of our culture. Yet beneath this outward conformity lies an irreducible originality. No one has inherited precisely the same past actual world that we have, and no one can respond to it in precisely the way we do. No one has the same experience. Every person is a novel togetherness of relations. Every person is a unique perspective on the universe. This unique perspective is our existential eccentricity.
Existential eccentricity is not unique to human beings. From a Whiteheadian perspective, every living being is eccentric in this deeper sense. Every bird, tree, octopus, wolf, and whale experiences the world from its own center and responds to it in its own way. Indeed, Whitehead suggests that this inwardness extends beyond life itself. Even the smallest events in nature, even molecules and atoms, possess their own perspective, however faint, inheriting the world from their own standpoint and contributing something of their own to the ongoing creative advance of the universe.
Human beings differ from these other organisms not because we alone are eccentric, but because we can be eccentric in uniquely human ways. We can reflect upon our eccentrity,, celebrate it, suppress it, cultivate it, and express it through language, art, science, friendship, morality, and religion. Our originality is one expression of a much deeper creativity at work throughout the cosmos. The universe itself is a community of unique centers of experience, each transending the center of every other, each participating in the continual becoming of the world.
For Whitehead, this cosmic creativity is not without direction. It is accompanied by a divine lure—a gentle call toward richer forms of existence, toward creative, compassionate, and life-giving ways of becoming. Because every center of experience is unique, this lure is never the same for everyone. It is infinitely adaptive, inviting each person, each living being, and indeed each center of experience toward the best possibility available in that moment. We can speak of this divine lure as God or Heaven or the Universe.
The Universe does not erase our eccentricity but affirms it, calling each of us to become ourselves more fully, more compassionately, and more creatively in relationship with others. In this sense, the aim of life is not conformity but the flourishing of unique lives whose originality contributes to the beauty of the whole.
Three Obstacles to Claiming Our Healthy Eccentricity
If healthy eccentricity is part of our calling, why do we so often fail to claim it? At least three obstacles stand in the way.
The Pressure to Conform. From childhood onward, we learn the values, habits, and expectations of our families, schools, workplaces, religious communities, and cultures. Much of this learning is indispensable. It enables us to live together. Yet the very forces that nurture us can also discourage originality, inviting us to become copies of what others expect rather than unique expressions of who we might become.
The Fear of Standing Apart. Even when we sense a different possibility for our lives, we often hesitate to embrace it. We fear misunderstanding, rejection, ridicule, or failure. Rather than trusting our own deepest possibilities, we hide them behind the safety of convention.
A Misunderstanding of Creativity. Many people imagine that creativity belongs only to artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, or other unusually gifted individuals. Whitehead offers a different vision. Creativity is at work in every moment of experience. Every person—and indeed every center of experience—participates in the creative advance of the universe by responding to what is inherited in a new way. Healthy eccentricity is not the privilege of a gifted few. It is the human expression of a creativity that belongs to the very nature of reality.
To claim our healthy eccentricity, then, is not to reject community, nor to seek attention for its own sake. It is to participate more consciously in the creative adventure of life, trusting that our own distinctive way of becoming can contribute, together with the originality of others, to a more compassionate and beautiful world.
The Pressure to Conform. From childhood onward, we learn the values, habits, and expectations of our families, schools, workplaces, religious communities, and cultures. Much of this learning is indispensable. It enables us to live together. Yet the very forces that nurture us can also discourage originality, inviting us to become copies of what others expect rather than unique expressions of who we might become.
The Fear of Standing Apart. Even when we sense a different possibility for our lives, we often hesitate to embrace it. We fear misunderstanding, rejection, ridicule, or failure. Rather than trusting our own deepest possibilities, we hide them behind the safety of convention.
A Misunderstanding of Creativity. Many people imagine that creativity belongs only to artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, or other unusually gifted individuals. Whitehead offers a different vision. Creativity is at work in every moment of experience. Every person—and indeed every center of experience—participates in the creative advance of the universe by responding to what is inherited in a new way. Healthy eccentricity is not the privilege of a gifted few. It is the human expression of a creativity that belongs to the very nature of reality.
To claim our healthy eccentricity, then, is not to reject community, nor to seek attention for its own sake. It is to participate more consciously in the creative adventure of life, trusting that our own distinctive way of becoming can contribute, together with the originality of others, to a more compassionate and beautiful world.
The Dignity of Each Person
To recognize the creative eccentricity of every person is to recognize the dignity of every person. If each of us is a unique center of experience—a novel togetherness of relations—then no one is merely an instance of a type, a replaceable part of a social machine, or a means to someone else's end. Every person is an unrepeatable expression of the creative advance of the universe.
This dignity does not depend upon intelligence, productivity, wealth, popularity, race, nationality, gender, religion, age, health, or social status. Nor does it disappear when people become frail, disabled, confused, or dependent upon others. It belongs to each person simply because each person is a unique center of experience whose life can never be duplicated.
To recognize this dignity is also to recognize our responsibility toward one another. We are called not merely to tolerate one another's eccentricities, but to make room for them, to encourage them, and to help them flourish in ways that contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Healthy communities are not communities of uniformity. They are communities in which diverse forms of creativity are welcomed, nurtured, and woven together in mutual respect.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, this respect extends beyond the human world. Other living beings possess their own forms of inwardness, their own ways of experiencing and responding to life. They, too, deserve our care. Indeed, the entire universe can be understood as a communion of unique centers of experience, each contributing in its own way to the ongoing adventure of existence.
Perhaps this is one way of understanding love. Love is the willingness to recognize and cherish the unique dignity of another, while also encouraging that person—or that living being—to become more fully who he, she, or it can become. In Whitehead's philosophy, this is also the way of God: the ever-present lure toward richer forms of beauty, compassion, and creative fulfillment. To honor the dignity of each person, then, is to participate in the divine adventure itself.
This dignity does not depend upon intelligence, productivity, wealth, popularity, race, nationality, gender, religion, age, health, or social status. Nor does it disappear when people become frail, disabled, confused, or dependent upon others. It belongs to each person simply because each person is a unique center of experience whose life can never be duplicated.
To recognize this dignity is also to recognize our responsibility toward one another. We are called not merely to tolerate one another's eccentricities, but to make room for them, to encourage them, and to help them flourish in ways that contribute to the well-being of the larger community. Healthy communities are not communities of uniformity. They are communities in which diverse forms of creativity are welcomed, nurtured, and woven together in mutual respect.
From a Whiteheadian perspective, this respect extends beyond the human world. Other living beings possess their own forms of inwardness, their own ways of experiencing and responding to life. They, too, deserve our care. Indeed, the entire universe can be understood as a communion of unique centers of experience, each contributing in its own way to the ongoing adventure of existence.
Perhaps this is one way of understanding love. Love is the willingness to recognize and cherish the unique dignity of another, while also encouraging that person—or that living being—to become more fully who he, she, or it can become. In Whitehead's philosophy, this is also the way of God: the ever-present lure toward richer forms of beauty, compassion, and creative fulfillment. To honor the dignity of each person, then, is to participate in the divine adventure itself.