The Hardest Lesson I've Ever Learned
04.27.02

As of today, I am 28 years, 2 months, and 19 days old. I say that to clarify how long it has taken me to gather this bounty of mostly useless information that I spew forth on a regular basis. Right now, I believe this age has both granted me two gifts. First, a lot of time and experience from which to learn. Second, enough time and experience to know that my learning is far from finished. In the spirit of learning and spreading knowledge, I have decided to impart to anyone willing to listen, the single hardest lesson I have learned thus far: what it really means to be myself.

Let's begin... at the beginning. I grew up amongst people I despised. I moved to a new neighborhood in time to start forth grade at a new school. Immediately, I realized that the attitude had already developed. To this day, I can't stand to be around people of the same attitude. What attitude? The constant feeling of entitlement. These were people whose parents gave them BMWs when they turned 17 and they expected everything else to be handed to them as well. See where I'm going here?

I will now, readily, admit that my bias was most likely born from my parents' inability to hand the entire world o me on a platter. I'm sure they would have liked to, but they couldn't. I suppose that I knew early on that I would need to work to get what I want, and I suppose I resented them at first because they couldn't. Yet still, like every one of you out there, I wanted to be accepted by them. But it wasn't until years later that I realized it wasn't really going to happen.

Maybe it's coincidence that the attitude wore on me and turned me to despise them around the same time that I realized I would never truly be accepted as one of them. Maybe one was the cause to the other's effect. Either way, part of the reason was that I truly WAS different than them. And I set out on my mission to prove it. If I couldn't fit in, I would stand out.

By the means of simple math, I can confidently say that this probably sounds familiar to a lot of you. The odds are in my favor. Since there were so few of the "select" when we were growing up, it meant that most of us were not one of them. Simple math, right? Which means that most of us needed to find our worth in other ways, for one very basic reason...

High school sucks.

It's that simple. There are a million games to play every day from morning to night. It can kick your ass. Parents want you to be a certain thing, act a certain way, and get good grades. School work and tests are hard enough. And in-between all those tests are the every day tests of being cool, fitting in, having a boyfriend or girlfriend, making the team, being the best, getting in to college... and the list goes on. And if you're in any way outside of the norm, you're in for some serious shit.

I've seen a lot of really scary ways that kids try to fit in, and even worse way they try to set themselves apart. Some scar or cut themselves. Gangs. Drugs. Violence. In an attempt to find themselves a niche, someplace where they fit or make sense, kids will go to dramatic lengths, convinced that what they are doing is right and good, swearing to the world and to themselves that THIS is what and who they really are. They're just keeping it real, right?

And for me, this standing out behavior didn't stop in high school. It went right into college. I continued to seek the spotlight trying to prove I was different from those around me, still trying to stand out. But it got worse. After I stood out from the majority of mediocrity in the school, I realized that I didn't really fit in with the group of people I was most aligned to, the group that I still wanted to be an accepted and known part of. See, I was (and AM) an artist. But I didn't really look like those artists around me. So I tried that too. I already was one of the people around me, but I still needed to look like them too, or more to the point, to look like what an artist is "supposed to look like." I thought maybe I wasn't weird enough still. Or my ideas weren't outside the box enough. I'm no longer sure what my problem was back then. And it was all despite the fact that I really WAS already all the things I wanted to be. But my concern was that it wasn't apparent to those outside of us. I was still looking to have everyone identify me with that niche. And I wasn't alone in that feeling. Likely, I'm still not alone there.

But somewhere along the line, I learned something REALLY important:

Doing things to show people that I was different from them wasn't any different than doing things to show that I was the same as them. They're still controlling my life. I'm still not ME.

I don't remember exactly what happened that caused the light bulb over my head to FINALLY click on, but I know that it didn't happen all too long ago. Maybe it was seeing the Matrix and remembering that I can make my own rules. Maybe it was reading The Celestine Prophecy. Maybe it was realizing that my masks, my shows I put for people, weren't really me. Maybe it was the love of two women who have since become my wife and my best friend, and their seeing the REAL me, that did caused the change. Whatever it was, it was a LONG time coming, and something that would've saved me a lot of heartache and headache had I learned it long ago.

I didn't need to fit in OR stand out. I didn't need to take everything inside me and spill out for everyone to see. By letting what "they" were and did dictate what I was and was doing, I lot all sense of self. What I really wanted to be and do was lost by wanting to be different.

The truth is that I am different. And so are each of you that are reading this. We ALL are. It just happens that our need to fit in and be accepted causes us to give up our individuality piece by piece. Face it, most of those kids that were different were made fun of, outcast. And it was so much better to be accepted for what we weren't than be outcast for what we were. The problem only arises when we realize that we want to be who we really are inside. Eventually, all the acts fall away, either because they take too much energy to keep up or we come to realize that there's no one left we really need to impress.

For a lot of people, these acts, these masks get worn much longer than they ever need to be. And for a lot of people, it's much harder to live without them. But for some of us, all that matters is truly being ourselves, being free. For some of us, there is no choice but to do so.

And when it matters most, we have to remember that the only way to be real is to ignore the influences outside of us. Listen to what comes from inside of us. Like what we like, believe what we believe, do what we really WANT to do. By doing ANYTHING solely for the reason that someone around us is doing it we lose ourselves. By the same stroke, by doing ANYTHING solely because it is NOT what someone around us is doing, we are still giving that someone control of ourselves. We still lose ourselves to them. And if we lose ourselves, what do we have left?