My Mystical, Lonely Life
Like what ever so often happens in my mystical life, things this week did one of those naturally connected moments. During COVID I’ve done a ZOOM call with two friends, Lee and Jim. We met decades ago, Lee just a couple of weeks after we arrived in Tennessee forty-six years ago. Jim, not too long after that. Jim lives nearby but Lee is in sunny Florida so we ZOOM it once a week in an effort to preserve some sense of sanity during these times we’re all going through.
Monday we were talking about life way back there and I mentioned what it was like to not have gone to a Nazarene college…which they both did. When I was headed to college my not so great high school counselor said, “Well, you’re good in math and science, try engineering”. I had no clue at that point so since my best friend was doing engineering and my maternal granddad’s career had been engineering, there I went.
I knew that I would eventually have to transfer to a state school even if I started at Bethany, the Nazarene college in Oklahoma, so my thought was why not just start at the university. So I trekked off to Oklahoma State which was a great experience, even when the fall semester of my junior year I left the college of Engineering for the college of Arts and Science and a psychology major…not nearly as ‘useful’ as an engineering degree.
After grad school and our move to Tennessee, when we were in Nazarene social circles, rather than the common starter “what do you do?”, it was “where did you go to school?” And they meant which NAZARENE college. When I said, “I went to a state school” the response was “Oh”…the worldly, godless campuses that dedicated Christians avoid. I would often mention that there were two of these hedonistic campuses, Ohio State University and Oklahoma State University, that actually had Nazarene Student Centers, but that never got me any points.
I mentioned on last Monday’s ZOOM how that repeated experience always made me feel, an outsider. Lee then asked, “Is that how you really felt?” His question was what surprised me but then if you’re an insider, you don’t know how those not ‘in’ perceive or feel. My response was, “repeatedly, yes”. It was not that I was traumatized in a massive way…it just fit in with a feeling I’d had before in other social and family situations.
Then, a couple of weeks ago when we were in Jackson, Tennessee as I often do, we dropped into Books-a-Million with our grandson, Joshua. On the discount table was a Brene’ Brown book, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. I bought it. After all it was a bargain at $8, sorry Brene’. I started it yesterday morning.
and she’s talking about feeling on the outside, always looking in with your nose to the glass. Been there…still there at times, even momentarily in that instance on the ZOOM call Monday. Brene’ quoted Maya Angelou:
You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.
So true. Many times I’ve felt like I just didn’t fit, was a third wheel. The ‘oddness’ in that was lonely, even shameful. It fed the desire to be on the team, just one of the guys, not standing out. The felt isolation really was that I was an introvert, not a crowd person. I ultimately did well one on one and small groups (even though I directed a non-profit for a couple of decades, I came into my own as a therapist).
All of this to say, many of us have these thoughts of being on the outside. I am far from alone as it turns out. Yet Maya Angelou’s statement is profound. The reward is great even though the comrades along the way get fewer.
Being who you are authentically as Brene’ says comes at a price, but it is worth paying. Some will see it as foolish. I see it as courageous, as brave…while still weighing the cost.
So from ZOOM to a Books-a-Million bargain. Then I learn that after teaching social work part-time at Trevecca College (now university) for a several years, I’m now considered an alum. Who’d a thought.
3/18/2021