unique as a snowflake

Any time anyone wants to talk about how important or unique each person is there is one metaphor and one metaphor only that is utilized to make the point. Of all of the trillions and trillions of snowflakes that have ever formed, all of them are unique. If they're unique, aren't you as well? There is one thing about that whole discussion that always bothered me, though.  How did they know for sure?  No one has compared anywhere near enough snowflakes to know that two are not identical.  Sure, at the molecular level it would make sense that no two snowflakes are identical, but on a molecular level no two of anything big enough for humans to see with the naked eye is identical.

Recently, I started getting curious about this metaphor and went searching, sort of expecting this to be more of a legend than truth.  It was in that search that I came across an article in National Geographic that indicated that it is probably true that no snowflakes are or have been alike.  There is obviously no real way to prove this, but there are enough factors at play that it is unlikely that two flakes ever formed enough in the same way to create two identical snowflakes.

The question I have, though, is why does this metaphor matter so much.  Why is the relative uniqueness of miniature bits of frozen water mean anything to our own uniqueness?  Why does the fact that a snowflake freezes in different ways under different factors make me as a person any more valuable or special?  Ultimately, why do we care?

The answer is probably that people are grasping at what we all hope for.  We want to be important, special, significant, one-of-a-kind.  If God created each snowflake differently, that same process must be at work in us.

Truth be told, though, it does not matter.  We are not snowflakes.  While we are unique, that is not what makes us significant.  While a person's uniqueness may make him or her feel more significant, I do not see that this truly does make them more significant.  If I had a twin that was identical to me in every way, would that make me less valuable as a person?

Really, any significance we have comes from our Creator rather than whatever about us happens to be different from the norm.  So maybe I am a unique snowflake.  Maybe I'm not.  In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter very much.