“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”― Timothy Leary
Yeah, that's me alright. Trying to fit in.
Well, that's two of us now.
ReplyDeleteI thought I was the only person who felt like this.
ReplyDeleteHow I know that feeling. Muttering the right passwords but still feeling I'm living in a parallel universe to other people. And who knows, maybe those people responding to my passwords are feeling exactly the same. But how do we break through the phoneyness into some genuine conversation? Easier said than done.
ReplyDeleteMe too, so that's five of us so far - hello to you all.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can count on one hand on-line and face-to-face friends who can cut through the crap and relate from their real selves.
I think Colin Wilson's "The Outsiders" saved my sanity 50-odd years ago when I was in my teens to the point that it's helped me to accept me as me. For some, I'm seen as a bit of an oddball, a bit intense and serious; for others they value my directness.
Here are a couple of books that have also been helpful throught my life, both by Eric Berne, the father of Transactional Analysis....Games People Play and What do you say after you say Hello.
Sorry, have rambled on a bit but this piece WWW spoke to me!
I'm too egotistical to want to know everybody's story and like superficial encounters just fine. I try not to share mine either and keep things airy and light as much as possible. In the end, we all share the same dramas. I don't want anybody else's pain added to mine.
ReplyDeleteAnother "me too"
ReplyDeleteI realized long ago
I was different :)
Sabine:
ReplyDeleteAnd climbing, I see :)
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GM:
ReplyDeletegood to know you missus!!
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Nick:
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm finding that as I age it is getting a lot more difficult to mouth those passwords.
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Pamela:
ReplyDeleteI absolutely loved those books, they saved mine, also.
I'm finding it harder to socialize lately and only feel real in a setting with kindred spirits. I am lucky there are a few around me :)
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Irene:
ReplyDeletePeople share their secret joys too, it isn't all pain in my experience. A shared chuckle is a lift to the spirits.
To each his own I guess :)
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OWJ:
ReplyDeleteI know you are a secret sister!
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Naw, I know I don’t, so I can’t even be bothered to try.
ReplyDeleteThe eternal outsider, that’s me. Don’t you think people who leave their native shores very often are outsiders and always will be? If they hadn’t left, they’d be like everybody back home.
When my older son was in elementary school, he looked at me one day and said, "You know, you aren't like the other mothers. You don't even look like the other mothers."
ReplyDeleteFriko:
ReplyDeletethat's an excellent point indeed. it would be interesting to do a study on that. Nah, scratch that, we already know, right?
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SAW:
ReplyDeleteOMG, that's exactly what my kids said! I never fit in with the others who seemed to have a secret language.
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I think everyone feels this to some extent, I just found it too exhausting to try and fit in, my daughter said I was a maverick mother! There I was thinking I melted in to the back ground!
ReplyDeleteNow though, I don't give a damn, and much happier for it.
CC:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100%. At the point where I don't care if I fit in or not.
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Finally getting the chance to catch up on some blog reading!
ReplyDeleteAnother 'me too' here... I wonder whether we aren't all outsiders trying to fit in to an "ideal" that actually doesn't really exist, dictated to us by TV, magazines and corporate executives. And we spend our lives feeling like we are the only ones who don't quite match, when actually we are all individual and should embrace that difference in ourselves, and others, rather than trying to squeeze through the herd shaped hole.