One Thought

Have you ever struggled with a problem for years only to discover, in a flash, that the solution is face-slappingly obvious? I’ve been having that happen a lot lately.

The best insights, I think, are the ones that seem so obvious — so trivial and even dumb — that I can’t believe I ever missed them. My past self must have been a real moron … What was he thinking?

Yesterday I finished writing an essay about my feelings of outsiderness – how I’ve always felt like an other, an outsider looking in, separate from any larger community.

I’ve only recently connected this feeling to experiences I had in the third and fourth grade. The short version: When I seven, my parents moved cross-country and I started at a new school. Then a year later, I was forced to transfer again to enter a new program. The new class was quite insular — the kids had been together for years at that point and weren’t very open to newcomers. I spent several formative years of my life feeling like an outsider.

I’m not going to post that essay. It’s only been a day since I finished it, and I already can’t relate to much of it. The facts are still the same, but my attitude has changed.

I realized in the course of writing it that my personal identity has become wrapped up in the idea of outsiderness. It helped form my tastes in music. It made it hard for me to feel a sense of belonging in groups. It made me feel separate, a lone wolf off on his solitary journey.

I also realized this feeling has shaped my personal myth — the story I tell myself, even if only subconsciously, about the arc of my life, my path, and my destiny. My myth has been that of the outsider.

It can be a tragic myth. I don’t think anyone really wants to be an outsider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not easy to come up with a story where you are one and then make the facts of your life fit that story. It’s not fun, but it’s easy.

So what’s the face-slappingly obvious part? It’s that I became so wrapped up in this outsider identity — this myth — that I couldn’t see its contingency. I couldn’t see that it wasn’t handed down from the gods but was instead the result of arbitrary experiences I had as an eight-year-old.

Pretty dumb, right? That’s a good thing.