"All I know are extraordinary people."
This simple statement holds multiple layers, each one valid, each one expanding our understanding of what it means to truly see others.
It might mean everyone in my life happens to be extraordinary. What an expansive feeling in our hearts this would be, recognizing our loved ones, our circle, as extraordinary beings worthy of celebration.
But "All I know are extraordinary people" carries other implications. For one, if everyone I meet, even briefly, becomes someone I know, then everyone I encounter is extraordinary. The cashier I just met, the stranger I passed on the street, they're all people I now know, however fleetingly. This quote suggests that all people, simply by being people, are extraordinary.
Meanwhile, there is another layer we can explore. This saying implies that extraordinary people constitute the most essential knowledge we possess, that after all the books and theories, what fundamentally enriches us most is what we exchange from encountering other living beings.
We naturally seek to know things. Facts, skills, strategies, philosophies. We accumulate knowledge like collectors, hoping that knowing more will complete us. And alongside this, what if there's another kind of knowing, equally valuable, that comes from people themselves?
Every person is a magnificent tapestry. Their specific combination of joy and grief, their particular way of laughing, the unique pattern of their wounds and healing. The way they hold their tea cup. How they look when they're thinking. The stories they tell themselves at 3 AM. Each person is an entire education in being human.
When we truly meet someone, really encounter them beyond the surface exchanges, we learn things that no textbook contains. We learn how resilience looks in this specific life. How love manifests in this particular heart. How suffering and grace interweave in this one irreplaceable story.
Maybe after years of seeking wisdom, we discover it was hidden in ordinary conversations, disguised as the mundane interactions, or sitting across from us at dinner. Each person teaching us something about courage, about fear, about the astonishing act of showing up.
The extraordinary isn't always dramatic. More often it's quiet. It's the colleague who tends to her aging mother without complaint. The neighbor who maintains hope despite losses that would be challenging for any of us. The friend who listens, really listens, when everyone else is too busy. The child who sees the world with eyes that haven't yet learned what's impossible.
Each person is an experiment that will never be repeated. The specific alchemy of genetics and circumstance, timing and choice, that creates this person, in this moment, responding to life in this way, it's an event to be cherished.
When we experience this, not as concept but as lived recognition, everyone becomes extraordinary. Not because they've achieved something perceivably worthy of special status, but because their very existence is special. Unrepeatable. Irreplaceable.
This doesn't mean we overlook people's flaws, their struggles, their ordinary humanness. If anything, we see these more clearly. But we see them as part of the extraordinary whole. The ways people fail, recover, fail again, keep going, this too is extraordinary. The way someone can be petty on Tuesday and generous on Wednesday. How they can wound and heal, sometimes in the same conversation. This complex, contradictory, constantly evolving nature of being human, it's all extraordinary.
But there's another facet to this extraordinariness, one that dissolves even the last remaining bits of separation.
Beyond the unique stories and individual expressions, there's something shared, something that connects all extraordinary people. It's what the Vedic texts recognize with the term, "Namaste," which means the sacred in me honors the sacred in you. Not different sacredness, but the same essence appearing in infinite forms.
The extraordinary we recognize in others is the very same extraordinary that lives in us. We're all carrying the same fundamental aliveness, the same spark of awareness, just expressed through different circumstances, different bodies, different stories. When we truly see someone's extraordinary nature, we're experiencing both their absolute uniqueness and the universal consciousness we share. Different lamps, same light.
This recognition changes everything. We're doing more than appreciating our loved ones. We're recognizing something that connects us all, something that is us all, something that makes every encounter a meeting of the sacred with itself.
"All I know are extraordinary people" becomes a practice, a decision about where to place our attention. When so much attention goes to what's lacking in others, what if we chose to notice what's extraordinary instead? Not by ignoring difficulty, but by seeing the full picture, including the extraordinary nature of survival itself.
What would change if this became our primary education? If instead of measuring our knowledge by what we know about the world, we measured it by how deeply we know the extraordinary nature of the people we encounter?
Perhaps then we'd realize that knowing extraordinary people isn't just one type of knowledge among many. It could possibly be the curriculum that matters most. Each person a lesson in resilience, a master class in being human, a PhD in the art of showing up despite everything.
These various facets of interpreting this quote aren't competing beliefs, but complementary ways of viewing the same gem. That people, when truly seen and known, are extraordinary, and this recognition transforms both how we live and what we value.
