This is a re-purposed post, patched up from an article I wrote in 2018 about the TV show I am most endeared to. It was about the theme of importance. I was thinking about just re-uploading it to this blog but I was struck with an unrelenting and uncomfortable thought after writing my last post.
‘There is DEFINITELY something off about secondary schoolers being whacked around the head to obey the stressful force of working, working, working for what you want.’
This stuck with me.
I have a grievance with the age-old comment of 'being special'. Needing to be special, to be told 'you are special'. The pressure of being special.
It pops up in shows I watch, this idea of needing to be special and different from the crowd in order to feel either self-worth or accomplishment. In Fox’s Glee, the titular and strikingly ambitious character Rachel Berry tells us that ‘being part of something special makes you special’ and that is worth a thousand merits.
And in Doctor Who, it pops up again in the companion character Donna Noble.
Donna: ‘I’m nothing special.’
Doctor: ‘No you’re not, you’re brilliant.’
But here, Donna does not have the inherent ambition and unwavering drive to be the best that Rachel has. Donna is our ‘every man’. It is far more realistic to lean on the side of the uninvolved, the unbelieving. This is why the pressure in school, as early as primary school, is so jarring and harmful to crowds of kids that wish not to be special. Not to stand out.
For mental health, the school system is by far the most challenging. Anxiety, depression, stress, body dysmorphia. A crippling, consistent pressure of needing to stand out and be comfortable is with us daily in classrooms, in hallways. The ability to stand up and be comfortable doing so, with eyes on you.
Could we shoot for being accepted, rather than special? Held up to our own, comfy expectations rather than an unrealistic shelf we can’t reach? For me, special can occur naturally and in its own time - maybe during A-Levels when the population of students has by and large calmed down. A time where teachers too – and parental figures – no longer are pressuring you to speak up, be proud of something you never felt attached to anyway, like an instrument, or the idea you are so special.
Is it too much to call for consent to want to feel special?
Since 2018, there have been active measures in schools to promote mental health awareness and mindfulness. But I propose that what also is needed is a revision to how kids are rewarded for good behaviour or grades - on a more individualistic basis would be ideal. Or maybe just a recognised way of getting across to kids that simply being is pretty good.
Back to Donna, the Doctor Who episode ‘Turn Left’ recalls her time in a parallel reality – a reality where she never met the Doctor and never went on all of those wonderful adventures with him. A man who showed her what it was to be special. To be important. The tragedy that befalls this parallel reality echoes Donna’s inner conflict about her self-worth. She struggles to feel important and cannot see her own significance without the Doctor. It is fantastical to think that an individual like the Doctor could alleviate your own negativity, your own complacency, and push you up into a higher level of life.
However it becomes clear that Donna still internalises her negativity in his presence.
Even when the Doctor insists that Donna is brilliant, she fails to believe this. Donna makes the decision to take her own life in the parallel reality to get back to that life with the Doctor. The idea that she was once happy with this man is the most desirable thing to Donna.
Donna: 'But if he was so special, what was he doing with me?'
Rose: 'He thought you were brilliant.'
Donna: 'Don’t be stupid.'
Rose: 'But you are. It just took the Doctor to show you that, simply by being with him. He did the same to me. To everyone he touches.'
This chance at a life where she knows happiness, importance, is placed quickly above her own immediate existence. She is desperate – to the point of committing suicide – to regain that life of worth. Even when she returns to the real world, Donna diminishes her self-worth into superficial details.
‘Just a temp.’ ‘100 words a minute.’
Her inability to see and respect her own importance, with or without the Doctor’s guidance, highlights the need for an overarching source of clarity. I believe that, for the majority of young students in school, that what is far more beneficial is the ability to understand that who you are is fine. And remains fine until you naturally feel otherwise. Shoe-horning specialness may work for some kids but in others it just causes anxiety, doubt and early – harmful – confirmation that you aren’t worthy of being special.
What Donna leaves us with is the inevitability of needing to carry on. If there is little to truly shift her lack of self-worth, then what she can do is remain productive and just carry on until she reaches a point where her beliefs are truly challenged, and self-importance is organic.
The moral of her character is that if you strive for that golden life, that golden feeling of being special, that may never come, then you miss what’s in front of you that truly propels you along. Individualism. What Donna did, ending one life to start another, is as commendable an action as any other made by a Doctor Who companion. Donna did what anyone else would do and believed, for a second, that she could pull herself into a better way of life. It is her action that defined her importance and worth, an action she took because she wanted the better version of herself – rather than having been led by the intangible idea of special. Instead, she was led by active change.
Fuelled by her own determination, relying on no-one else, Donna made the change. She was thinking entirely of herself, not the Doctor, as she made that choice. Led by wanting to feel happy, to feel alive.
And that is the most worthy kind of selfishness.
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