It has always amazed me to think of all the ways we, as individuals, are the same and yet so very different. When I am able to sit down at night and relax a little I enjoy watching the CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) shows on TV. Though I realize that they take license with much of the evidence they find, it is still fascinating to me to imagine the different ways in which we can be identified as unique and different. I also like to see bad guys get their ‘just desserts.’
When I first came to understand, as a young person, that each of our fingerprints are different, I was amazed and thought how can that be? Then science started discovering other things that are not only unique about human beings but about many other things in the world. For example, the trillions of snowflakes are each unique and different from one another, etc.
A person’s DNA, as we know it today, can identify an individual as well as family relationships. Many companies are now allowing access to scientific labs by eye recognition only. Each person’s iris has a significantly different pattern from everyone else’s. A study, conducted not too many years ago, evaluated brainwaves and they discovered that everyone’s brainwave is unique. There are probably dozens of more points of difference from individual to individual. Our uniqueness goes on and on and new ways to describe that uniqueness are being discovered all the time.
I remember an elderly neighbor who was a very spiritual High Priest, who had a heart attack. While close to death, in the hospital, he described a vision he had. He said he was in heaven and found himself in a large room (area) full of computers. This was at a time when computers were still in their relative infancy. Since this world was patterned after our pre earth home, is such a concept that unrealistic? To him the vision was so real that it is recorded in the family’s remembrances of him. Haven’t you ever wondered how Heavenly Father keeps track of each of us? I suppose it qualifies as one of the mysteries of Godliness. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has one of the most sophisticated computing systems in the world in order to track each unique and different member of the church and our ancestral relationships. The church, for decades, has used individual ward records to track us in our worldly presence.
We know we are each precious in God’s sight and that he loves us and, if possible, would like each of us to be successful in our earthly pilgrimage. We must try to be loyal to our charge, which is to maintain our hold upon the Iron Rod. If that is our lot, we then have a promise to share His eternal realm. If we learn this very important lesson, of our uniqueness, then as an anonymous poet has said (modified); Dare to believe that you are a wonderful, unique person That you are a once-in-all-history event, That it is more than a right, it’s your duty, to be who you are. That life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish. That you can’t do all things better than everyone else. You have to discover your strengths, and use them. Then you will be able to stay one up on what used to get you down.
I appreciate what Victoria Moran said, “Growing into your future with health and grace and beauty doesn’t have to take all your time. It rather requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is.”
May our Father bless us to appreciate our unique natures.