Our oddness counts

“Our oddness counts for more than our normality. Our strangeness connects us to others more than our conventionality, and when we identify with people it is because we recognize the otherness we share with them.” -Declan Donnellan, The Actor and The Target

Daren spends a lot of time with his two sons. He’s a good dad and wants his boys to be successful in life. The majority of his time with the boys is, in one way or another, teaching them to stand out, to excel, to be independent. The boys go to the batting cages several times a week to practice their swings. “Look at how they connect with that ball! These boys are going to college on a scholarship,” Daren proudly proclaims. His sons are 5 and 7 years old.

Both boys play on little league teams with boys whose fathers also take them to the cages. “The competition is intense,” Daren tells me.

Recently, Daren’s oldest boy started having trouble in school. He’s getting mixed messages. In class, he has to sit still in his desk and talk only when called on; blending in is rewarded. He wants to have the same clothes as his peers; looking cool is important and looking cool means not standing out, at least not too much. Yet he’s also constantly reinforced to stand out, to get an “A “on every test, in every class. He works hard to be “a good citizen” so his dad can display a bumper sticker declaring, “My son is student of the month.” He’s trying to figure out what it means to be a “team player” when to get the scholarship and win dad’s approval, he also has to be better than everyone else. It is at best confusing and at worst debilitating.

We’ve all had to negotiate the schizophrenic demands of contemporary American culture—how to distinguish yourself and fit in all simultaneously. These polar–opposite demands play havoc with our psyches and leave us not only with a big identity gap but trap us in the vicious circle of reduction as the only way of negotiating the poles.

What happens when “winning” is pitted against “fitting in” and both are requirements for success? For Daren’s son, it means bullying the “Other” kids; he gets to belong to the “in” group by diminishing others. Daren is incensed that the school is punishing his son for bullying. “That other kid did something to deserve it,” Daren tells me. “My kid wouldn’t hit someone unless he was provoked!”

“Or unless he was rewarded,” I said, knowing my offering would hit the ground with all the grace of a lead balloon. “The other kid’s to blame!” Daren said. End of conversation.

I once consulted with a school district that experienced a rapid influx of Indo-Chinese students, the children of refugees escaping from Vietnam and Cambodia. The parents of these students spent what little food money they had to buy “American” clothes for their children; they hoped in vain that their children would suffer less rejection at school if they wore the right brand of jeans. The rejection (bullying) escalated, of course—imagine the audacity of those “outsiders” trying to fit in!

What happens when an inescapably different child comes to the playground and “fitting in” isn’t on the menu of options?

What happens, as in the case of Daren’s son, when an inescapably different child comes to the playground and “fitting in” is the only option on the menu?

Both are in an untenable position. Both are reduced. Both divest themselves of their inescapable differences, their uniqueness, and seek to create a persona that is acceptable to the group (by the way, every member of “the group” is engaged in the same activity, disappearing into the gap between fitting in and winning. Skeptical? Ask yourself when you left your creativity behind? When did you decide that you couldn’t draw or dance or sing? Where did all that uniqueness go? When was the last time you were fully present? I find that folks eventually stop looking and go to the Mall to fill the gap).

Daren’s son bullies because he sees himself in the Other kid: he needs to make an outcast because, in truth, he fears being an outcast.

I suggested to Daren’s son (with his dad frowning by my side) that the way to distinguish himself, the way to win in a manner that creates no loser, is to reach out to the Other kid and learn who he is. Walk into the difference and reach across that gap in himself. I suggested that it was impossible to reduce another human being without also reducing yourself.

“Utopian hogwash,” was Daren’s comment to me after his son went to bed. “You don’t understand. The competition out there is intense.”

 

-David Robinson