The shape was unmistakable, the square corners and distinct boxy shape were rigid and iconic.  It looked densely structured enough to repel the Newtonian forces of freeway collision, yet rigidly sleek and angular on the planes of each of its sides.  The outer cover challenged my perception, but only slightly.  The denim was taught against the flat surfaces as it followed the crisp lines of where the back end turned to the sides.  “What do you think?” my wife of then more than fifteen years asked.  “Do they make my ass look fat?”  I paused, but only for a brief second to take in the full view.  “Hell no,” I said, “but your ass makes them look like a blue jean car cover on a Volvo wagon,” I said in a genuinely contemplative tone.

As your shock settles in, let me pause here to briefly note that since that time my wife has led our family, including our child, to a much healthier lifestyle of more informed food choices, including her now multi-year quest for her own physical fitness.  And while that pair of jeans never made it home from the vintage clothing store, I have always adored my wife in any form, including her sense of humor and love of irony that helped us decide to recount our memory of that day.

Back to the day in the store, my wife took the news as intended.  Her face adorned with her dimple-dipped grin, she closed the gap between us, gently kissed me on the lips and disappeared behind the hippy bead and aborigine colored fabric drapes of the dressing room to change back into her vacation clothes.   I stared at the curtain, wondering if anyone would see me slip inside the dressing room with her.  As I surreptitiously glanced side to side, I found a woman appearing to be in her mid-fifties, dismissing unsatisfactory garments at a wall rack some ten feet away.  My sense was she was incongruously dressed to make unambiguously clear to others how structured and righteous her life was.  She had donned a practical dress of appropriate length, hosiery and sensible rubber soled shoes, her ensemble topped with a plastic raincoat the color of mayonnaise which has been left to brown in the sun.   Her face shone with the conviction of someone who has rarely spoken anything in absence of moral certainty.  In just that moment’s glance I could see she was preparing to enlighten me with the fate I had evidently assured myself, brought about by my morally reprehensible private comment to my wife.  “You will end up in hell,” she informed me with the tone of someone who had just documented an irrefutable fact.  Her manner and tone were clearly chosen to ensure I understood that I was to gratefully accept the words of eternal damnation, as if the veritable morning sky clouds had suddenly parted to allow the disembodied voice of Charlton Heston to bestow them unto me.  Just as I was about to engage this God’s angel on Earth with one of the undoubtedly witty retorts I was mentally selecting from, my lovely and graceful then-Rubenesque wife slipped from the dressing room.  She was as she had been when we arrived, infectiously engaging, beautifully dressed in beach wear, and every bit the women that I still deeply love to love.  She grabbed my hand, my heart raced and I instantly forgot about the morality prophet.  She and I bounded out of the store to continue our vacation together.

Strangely I found myself thinking of the other woman in the store that day.  I should note that have no new fondness for stale mayonnaise colored rain ware.  Rather, as our United States Constitution requires, President Obama came before Congress a few days ago to deliver the State of the Union address.  He spoke of our need to do, as we have done more or less (sometimes much less) since our founding, to take on the hard challenge to invest in our future, and to dig deep within ourselves to contribute to our shared success through valuing education and science.  What he did not do, although I must admit it was not cognizant of this fact until the choral drone of the pundits so informed me the next day, was to say that we Americans were an “exceptional people.”  Quite literally, from their ego-bruised vantage, he failed to state as fact that we are a people who are blessed by our Judeo-Christian (but of course not Muslim) creator with fundamental characteristics that make us individually and collectively an exception to the rule of the lamentable commonness. Such commonness, they were careful to note, which evidentially exists everywhere outside our one chosen country.  The President did use some pesky data to note how we have abysmally fallen behind in our health care and education systems as compared to other industrial countries, but like the servant of a higher moral plane that found me that morning in Vintage Rags, exceptional people need not be burdened with facts.  We are, because we say we are, and not because of any rational data-driven comparison to others.

Is this truly who we have become?  Are we now the laughable naked Emperor who tirelessly stands on the public stage professing the beauty of our exceptionally fashionable clothes?  Does anyone else feel the draft?

Over the last decade I have studied and lead corporate programs designed to bring about product and process development innovation.  This work and my study have enabled me to explore what are some of the reasons for the failings of so many organizations’ attempts to bring about the creative best from their teams.  One distinct and repeating pattern, I have come to learn, is that we are an exceptional people.  You see exceptional people do not have to learn how to do things, neither through burdensome science, nor elitist methods for improving how we do our work and create ideas.  Exceptional people are, as I have now seen so very many times, capable of divining the “one right answer,” and are then more than capable of explaining to others that no additional work is required to refine that answer because each idea was, as with its source, also exceptional.  I am constantly astounded how often genuinely intelligent people come to the conclusion that hard work and, dare I say, a course of rationally challenging one’s first thought is simply not necessary.  Why follow a multi-hour or multi-day methodology to produce results when one can just think one exceptional thought, and then go about their day spreading the joyous news that we, who are exceptional, do not have to dig deep and find the intestinal fortitude to work hard. What a time saver that is.

Although I recognize such facts would have been wasted on my exceptional eavesdropping co-shopper, what my wife was really asking that morning was, “I know these are the wrong size pants and will look bad. On a scale of, let’s say a tightly wrapped Costco-size package of fifty rolls of toilet paper, to perhaps a cargo shipping container stuffed into a lunch sack, how bad does my otherwise voluptuous rosy bottom look in these pants?”  In essence, my wife was asking me a gag question, because the irony of the response was one of the joys of being married to someone who loves you for who you really are, sense of humor and all.  She was spending time with someone to whom you can display ill-fitting clothes on a vacation day romp, simply because the experience is amusing.  Of course our divinity-as-a-sword wielding onlooker had no use for such inconvenient information.  Because she believed, as you might have surmised, she was exceptional.  She was imbued by the universe’s one and only God with the moral right and capability of passing judgment on anyone who was far more common than was she, without that nasty information and context that elitists seem to love.

So who were those exceptionally well compensated pundits preaching to about our need to be told we are exceptional?  I’m certain many of their target audience spent part of their day standing in line at a local fast-food spot to consume a week’s worth of calories at a single sitting of refined starch, near limitless quantities of sugar, water, gas bubbles and food coloring, all topped off with nutritionally devoid, but decidedly tasty fried sticks of what look disturbingly like potatoes.  Now I am the first to say have been known to filet o’fish now and then, but what I do understand is that by ingesting twelve to twenty times the calories I can utilize in a day, I will become obese and generally unhealthy.  If that is at all a frequent experience for me, I will, without a doubt, cause myself to be super-sized.  I also realize that I have more than enough information to come to that fact-based conclusion.  Do I have some secret knowledge that the line filled with three to four-hundred pound people cannot have?  Of course I do not.  Should I conclude that each of those massively obese people desire to live a shortened and burdened life of disease?  Again, I do not believe that is the case.  I think the problem may be far more sinister, and that is that by thinking of one’s self as exceptional, it suggests that one is relieved of the burden of understanding information, occasionally making harder choices and taking the less trodden path of knowledge, learning and practice.  Is there an app for that?  How about a pill, which of course someone else should pay for, but definitely not through universal health care? That would be Socialism. (Scamper away now pesky facts about what Socialism really is, exceptional people “don’t need no badges.”)

When President Obama noted in his State of our Union address that American industry in the 1950’s had been lifted by the government infrastructure investment in freeways and power grids, this seemed a simple fact to understand.  This infrastructure had, as he noted in part, been used to easily move commerce around to consumers, and to inexpensively power factories and stores built for the local consumerism that such factory salaries created.  He further noted that our failure to continue to invest (much less maintain) that infrastructure now makes it much harder and more costly to create and operate businesses in America. That too seemed easy to understand.  His was a cry for investment in us.  Work which could be done by our unemployed and under-employed workforce, which would also make it easier and more cost effective for Americans and others to build and operate companies in America.  I thought this was a message we could all understand and rally around.  I was, as you might have again surmised, quite mistaken.  Evidently exceptional people do not invest, which I learned is really called raising taxes (silly Democrats), nor do they care about what it takes to create jobs in America (silly unemployed people).  Surely by now there is an app for that which doesn’t require effort.  Clearly there must be a pill that our divine creator can provide to us, so as not to be burdened with the effort of understanding, compromise and (oh please forgive me) some hard work.

Am I an elitist when I state that Americans are not exceptional?  Does this bit of electronic pen to paper drip of bitterness directed at those who have divine faith or body weight challenges?  In both cases I would sincerely say no.  I believe religion is only harmful when it asks one to put themselves above others.  When it suggests the members of the speaker’s religion are not bound by the same cosmic burdens of others by virtue of being somehow righteously special.  I believe everyone can stand in line at McDonalds and see that this is not a place where healthy people congregate, and perhaps they should wonder why.  I also believe there are millions of people who stoically work hard more hours each day than I can imagine, and then come home and into their communities extol the virtue of education for themselves and children?  I also believe these dedicated souls are the rule, not the exception.  What I find tragic is the pervasiveness of the talk of exceptionalism, as though it is an effort free cure (like fat-free salad dressing at McDonalds).  I find it tragic when used as an excuse that takes people away from digging deep within themselves to stop pretending that fast and cheap food is really going to be healthy, when nearly every consumer in the restaurant is so tragically and obviously on a path to obesity and death.  I find it nearly beyond comprehension that politicians can walk their districts without exclaiming our health care system needs all of the overhaul it can get, and that left to our own devices most will so clearly not make the best choices about what we need to be healthier.  You want fries with that?

What is exceptional to me is that there are “political” commentators who make multi-million dollar salaries by convincing people in need of having faith that it merely takes someone to tell them that they are exceptional to make everything in their often painful lives better.  What is exceptional to me is that so many intelligent people of means and access to nearly limitless fact-based information can look at the tasks before our country and conclude that something other than a dedicated course of hard work will get us back on a sound economic track.  What remains exceptional to me are those who think saying they are exceptional actually makes them superior to those who ignore the temptation to suggest they are better than others.  What I also find exceptional are those who can pass judgment without any thought that a quest for knowledge might help one appreciate a long hard journey of learning before judging.  And finally, what is truly exceptional to me is a desire to want to be pacified with mere words and simple labels, so one can be easily convinced someone else will provide.  How exceptional indeed.

I am proud that I am not exceptional.  I want to be educated and thoughtful, and I am willing to gain less excess for myself if I can help others reach their aspirations of success through hard work and continuous self-improvement.  Thank you, but no, I do not want my President to tell me that I am somehow exempt from the burdens of my fellow Americans, nor exempt as a member of the community of beings on the Earth.  I wish to be part of the rule that says we must help each other learn more; to invest for our children and in our communities, so they can employ our families.  I wish to surround myself with those who dedicate their lives to learning, doing and then teaching.  My sincere hope is we, as a society, will embrace the notion that to pretend we are better than others is foolish, childish, and destructive.  It is my hope that these sad and close-minded souls are the genuine exception, and not those who will bring about the rules that my family, my community, my country and my planet will be bound by.

I will stand for my judgment and profess my willingness to have been of the people who did what they could to help when they had the opportunity.  I will sink or swim with those who believe that knowledge, dedication and effort are my path to a better life.  And I will try to understand those who stand apart from us, espousing their exceptional superiority, while they thoughtlessly benefit from the increased burden and efforts of others.  I will do these things in part because I believe it would be the more tragic result if I were to live in a land of exceptional people who become the general rule.