Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. – Steve Jobs
Have you ever asked, “Will I ever truly fit in ?” I have, more than anything else all my life.
I have always found myself to be an outsider, a misfit within society, culture, friends, and people. Even I never felt like I could fit myself into any ideology, philosophy, societal structure or a religion. I am sure every one of you must have felt the feeling of not fitting in, at some point in your life, some more than others. What does it mean by “I don’t feel like I fit in.” and why do we want to fit in?
The Beliefs of the Outside World
Society
Every society has its own structure, rules, regulations, standard norms and beliefs. A group of people live in the way they live and interact because of a shared set of beliefs. What truly makes a society unique is its set of shared beliefs. Everything ugly and beautiful about a society is of that shared belief. For example, A society believes “Money is the most important and determining factor for a successful and fulfilling life.” Then most people are in base agreement with this belief. This belief is reflected in their lifestyle, actions and conversations. Their discussion and conversation will be on topics such as investment, economics, saving and prices. A society believes that there is a particular way men and women must conduct themselves in matters of dressing, and behaviours and everyone is in a covert agreement on that. And indeed in that society, men and women act in that fashion and interact with each other, according to that belief.
When a child is born, its first interaction is with parents and immediate family members. They are the first link of a child to society. Through them, it learns the beliefs of a society.
Places
Have you ever asked yourself: “Why do you like to travel to certain places ?” Places are filled with people, but there is more to it. It is about the weather, trees, animals, plants and much more. Places have their own beliefs too, a bit deeper than society. Every village or city has a unique feeling to it. Some feel cosy, messy, structured, unstructured, safe, dangerous, rude, natural and many more.
In a way consciously or unconsciously we all feel it. We can feel the outside world, place and people. We may or may not put them into words, yet this is the way we judge the outside world, people and places. Sometimes we feel welcomed, received, and safe, at home and other times we feel rejected, unsafe and unnatural.
Individuality: The innate individual understanding
If you see a bunch of children, they all seem so different, and unique. Every one of them has their way of being. This is why I believe that every one of us has a uniqueness, that is beyond places, society, education and parents. We all have individual longing, desire, attraction and understanding of life. Some of us are into art and poetry, some of us are into wealth and materialistic things in life or some of us are into science and knowledge. The diversity is infinite. We all have tendencies, some we know and some we just don’t know. Yet they have been guiding us, all our lives, despite what the world keeps telling us to do otherwise. In my culture, we say you are born with your individuality, an innate understanding of life. You carry it from your past lives. It is not in my experience yet it makes sense to me. We are all so unique from each other even our siblings that it can’t be all society, parents, education and life experiences.
The Feeling of Not Fitting In
When your individuality is in direct conflict with the collective beliefs of the outside world, you feel like an outsider, a sense of not fiting in, and beloging.
The intensity of the conflict is the degree to which the outside world does not make sense to you. For example, You truly feel that “Money, power, status is not going to give you fulfilment in life.” Yet you see the whole word running after it. You don’t feel like you fit in. You are into art, music, poetry, and subtle things in life, and you keep hearing from others, “If you go this path you will not sustain in life.”
The conflict usually starts in childhood, with the outside world where a child is born. A child is very very sensitive, and it feels way more than most adults can truly comprehend. It can feel the outside world and know if its individuality is welcomed and accepted or not.
Why do we want to fit in
“Why does a child want so much to fit in? Is it really that important?”
Suppose, you are going to a business meeting, and you just thought that today I will be wearing a casual dress. When you arrive, everyone is in a business dress code. Even though no one tells you anything, you feel like other people are judging you.
A judgment is non-acceptance. When a child does not feel like it fits into a world, it feels like getting judged 24×7 all the time. The judgment of the world makes it feel like it does not belong here. We all would like to feel a sense of belonging, and acceptance. What is love, if not a space, where you perfectly fit, belong, and are accepted? I think we all dream of a space, where nothing feels out of place. The desire to fit in is the longing for love and acceptance.
Sometimes you don’t fit into societal standards, so you are deprived of societal love.
Sometimes you don’t fit into a place, and you are deprived of a feeling of home.
Sometimes you don’t fit into an idea, and you feel like an irregularity.
The pain of misfits
The pain of a child who feels like an outsider and misfit all the time is extreme. It is the pain of the absence of love. The degree to which it didn’t fit in, is the level of pain it feels. It runs around from home to school to friends, trying to belong and everywhere it goes, it feels a subtle rejection and judgment. It feels like its innate individuality is not welcomed anywhere. A child is very innocent and naive. So it starts to go two ways:
One, it starts to blame itself, that something must be very wrong with me. This is why I don’t feel like I belong and fit in. It starts to hold a deep belief within that
“Something is very wrong with me.”
The child feels shameful and guilty for being born the way it is. The child starts to think, “I need to change myself to belong, loved and accepted.” So it starts to behave in ways it does not align with its individuality and tendencies. It starts to follow every rule, regulation, and norm of society, so it gets accepted and loved. It starts to care too much about how the world is judging it. It tries to be perfect as per the outside world’s rules and regulations.
Second, it starts to blame the outside world, that something must be very wrong with the outside world. They can’t fit me in, they are stupid, and that is why they don’t understand me. A deep belief creeps in
“Something is very wrong with everyone.”
It starts to pile up, anger, rage and resentment towards the outside world, that they can’t fit me in. It thinks I need to dominate the world, to be loved, accepted and belong. It stops caring about what everyone thinks. It becomes very rebellious, it breaks every rule and norm of the outside world.
Most thinks it is the nerd kid who has buried himself in books away from everyone is a misfit. But know that it is the bully who keeps poking around everyone is also a misfit.
Burden of Not Fitting In
Let’s say you never fit in as a child. You didn’t feel like you belonged in the world you were born into. Then decades passed by, you met so many people and you lived in so many places, yet that feeling of not fitting in stayed. Have you asked:
Is it true that there is no space/place/people on the whole planet who share a similar belief that your heart carries?
Or are you carrying a burden of not belonging till now in your life?
I asked myself the same question, and indeed to my surprise, the latter was true.
The feeling of not fitting in still stays within your experience because there is a deep unconscious belief in the mind that “I will never fit in. Something is wrong with me or something is wrong with the outside world.” Now that you have a belief, you have to prove it right as well. Because of this you unconsciously find places, people and groups where you don’t fit in. At the same time, you are consciously trying very hard to fit in as well. So you again create a space which is similar to your childhood, where you don’t belong to a space, yet you keep fighting to belong. You are fighting with yourself and this cycle continues. The day you see this cycle all you can truly do is laugh or cry a bit. It is funny, and pathetic at the same time. I am guilty of this as well.
You put your self-worth based on how much you belong to spaces you don’t really belong in the first place. This is how the mind plays games with itself.
The Way Forward: Finding your uniqueness
The way forward to a better experience of life is to find your forgotten uniqueness and individuality. First of all, congratulations!! for feeling like you don’t fit in. That means you remember your unique individuality in some ways. The only way the whole outside world can’t subdue you into giving up your uniqueness is that you have a very very strong and unique individuality.
The real question is: Do you know what your unique individuality is?
Many people think I like doing this, doing that, my hobbies are this, that is my uniqueness. This is not really your individuality. For example, you like playing a sport. There could be 100 reasons why you like playing a sport. You might like it because you feel energetic, you might like it because you meet like-minded people, or you might like it because it gives you a space to show your competitiveness and aggression. So actions in the outside world are not really important, what is important is your inner motivation behind that action.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What makes you, you?
- If you become all-powerful right now, what would your life and the world would look like in your image?
- What are your core values in life, that are not taught by parents and society?
These might sound like difficult questions to answer. As I see it, finding answers is easy, it is a part of you, that you can’t let go. The difficult part is to be proud of those answers and fight for them. That is the day, you start to shine in your individuality. In this shine of your individuality, you let of that burden of not fitting in. You start to find your way of being, your people and your philosophy of life, that works for you.
To all misfits out there,
I know it takes great strength and resilience just to survive and feel normal in a world where you don’t fit in. But you are not here just to survive. You are here to flourish to your fullest individual uniqueness. The world can’t fit you, because it doesn’t have the strength and understanding to fit you. However, you can give that gift to the world. You can bring out your unique individuality and share it with the world.
– Sachin Kumar Bhoi
Leave a Reply