On "Specialness"

"Let's hear a few of those things that make you special!"
This was a question posed to me from one of the generous readers of my blog last week.
I was kind of gob-smacked.
Nobody had ever asked me that before.
"How brazen!" I thought.
 At first.
Then I considered what was actually meant and I thanked them. This was not a confrontational question at all. They were giving me an opportunity to actually consider what it is I am doing here. What do I have to say and what makes the way I say it at all unique?
I had never sat myself down and thought about it before. I have been an artist in one medium or another my entire life. I have drawn from the time I could hold a pencil properly. Not once had I ever considered what I could do as special.
There are a lot of folks who can do what I do, perhaps far better. At last count it was "most of them". The thing that makes us stand out in our chosen modes of expression is not typically the technical. Really, most anyone can show some technical ability with the proper training and dedication.
Technical skills are really just the cost of admission. Art school cannot make you an artist. There is no diploma one can earn that will prepare you for the rigors of a life lived in the arts. What an art school does is teach you  how to use the tools you will need to one day BECOME an artist.
So what's left?
What's the magic sauce?
To torture a conceit, it is not the tools at your disposal, but how you use them.
You.
Your qualities. Your perspective of the world and how you see yourself in it. We all come from very different places. Our life experiences, the people who shaped us and our world view. The things that are important to us. These are what inform our personal truth as artists, that which we attempt to share with our audience through whatever tools at our disposal.
Some people use pencils. Some paint. Some clay and fire. Those who choose the dramatic arts do so with themselves.
We could each portray the same character in a play, wear the same costume and even affect the same accent. We will still create a completely unique, valid performance from each other. We can't help it.
I take heart in that knowledge.
Nobody could ever perform the way I do. 
Think of a director as a painter. The stage is his canvas. His palette is his ensemble. Each member of the cast was chosen for the specific color that they bring to the piece.
If you get the part, you were precisely the shade they were looking for.
Understand what makes you unique, embrace it, and get to work.