Fourth Form of Madness

Last night as hubby and I enjoyed a dinner out at a local restaurant, I overheard a conversation on another table. I’m no Mrs Mangle but I do enjoy good conversation and love nothing better than to discuss, sometimes a little too passionately and heatedly, a topic of interest, particularly if that issue is about how to live your life. So I start to get drifts of the conversation and fairly soon I realise the man on the next table is retelling advice he has given to his young daughter about how to behaviour at school so that she doesn’t stand out or cause others to pick on her. My heart and ears both hear this one. Apparently, his daughter is an “individual” and seems not to have learnt quite as quickly as the others to blend into the crowd and to not stand out. His advice still rings in my ears ….”You just have to learn to be like all the other kids, to say the things they do, to like the things they do, and to pretend you like them. Then you can come home and be yourself and tell us about it”.

My heart felt heavy. I immediately identified with that little girl and felt the loneliness and separation I had felt as a child many times when I realised I didn’t always fit in with the views of the crowd. I was always the one that asked questions, caused conflict and said what I thought, even went it meant being austericized and picked on. I remembered many times during primary school and high school verbally fighting with fellow students across classrooms due to our different views. I think the only thing that saved me from being expelled on more than one occasion was that I excelled academically and I also was usually fighting about ethics somehow in a round about way, which appealed to many of my teachers.

I never wanted to the cause of conflict, or confrontation but I came from a stigmatised or afflicted background and the gift of coming from this background is that you have to decide from an early age, are the masses always right? I guess I decided no. What do I mean by stigmatised/afflicted? My father was a manic depressive and my brother was gay. These were things, particularly when I was growing up, that were treated as negative social indicators and whether they realise it or not, other people treat you accordingly. Therefore, you are sometimes taught to internalise this negativity towards these situations and feel somehow “not good enough” or “not like everyone else”. The living truth is, these things are just life, plain old life with no wrong or right tag but just how life comes. It’s the social that always has to judge and grade and I guess it is always the social that I have fought with. Often I would engage in heated verbal exchanges with other kids about my older brother. I have always loved and idolised my brother. He is funny, sensitive, so full of charm and so full of social justice. I decided from an early age that no one was going to tell me that loving whoever you wanted was wrong. This rationale that allowed me go against social rules even when at the time the majority of society was telling me otherwise has been a wonderful gift.

I secretly prayed that the girl, who’s father only meant well and wanted to protect her by telling her to act and think like everyone else, wasn’t going to follow his advice. I prayed that she would instead have the strength of character and inner will to go again the crowd and be herself, whatever that may be and whatever consequences that would bring. Some of the greatest crimes in this world have been caused or at least allowed to happen by people just wanting to be one of the crowd, by people not wanting to shake the boat or speak out against something that didn’t seem right. I prayed that she would not be one of these people……. And then I ate my hubby’s pudding because it was there and finished off the last of my coffee and stopped staring at the other table.