The real monk, the one who’s deepest desire (God) is in line with the way he lives, is a smasher of idols. And the biggest idol he smashes is the notion that being called a monk means he is somehow special or different from others. He doesn’t pretend he is a monk, because he knows he’s just trying, and always will be trying to be what a monk is supposed to be. He’s on the way to being a monk, a lover of God (meaning lover also of all His creation) and never will arrive fully at his destination until he moves on to the Holy City. He can laugh at the notion that appearing different because he lives in a special sort of place, living a lifestyle different from most others, means he is actually different from anyone.

There is a wonderful meditation on this idol smashing in the book Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life by Mary Margaret Funk, OSB, where she reflects on her own life as a Benedictine nun:

If I’m serious about searching for God, I must undress before myself, knowing that really I’m not a nun, yet. I’m just pretending until the nun-form takes shape. I know deep down that all images of myself must be smashed and destroyed. I dread the process of unmasking my hollowness and all my illusions. They protect me from myself. But now thoughts that protect my illusions have to go. (Continuum 2001, p. 71)

And that’s it! All illusions about ourselves, all the tags we use define ourselves with, must go, be utterly destroyed, if we are to become our real selves, children of God, lovers of life, of all, of God. And that’s what faithful monks do, hidden away in their monasteries; they smash the idol of differentness, of uniqueness, of specialness, they smash the idol of monk.

http://monasticism.org/monk/category/monastic-life/