Moving Out of the Out-Group

I love that video that Donny posted here. It’s beautifully done, but a couple of lines from the song have been rattling round in my head constantly for the last two days, so I’m going to have a go at writing a blog post and see whether it helps me unscramble my thoughts a bit (because – you know – a public blog is the perfect place to figure out your innermost issues…)

Here are the lyrics:

And his thoughts began to vanish that his body was the prison of his own mind.
You don’t have to be the out-group – you can be the one that fits in this time

OK – they look kinda cheesy written down, but they work well within the song.

ANYWAY – here’s the thing:

Since we’ve started talking to restaurants and getting availability from the Town Hall, my stress levels have been going through the roof. There’s been more than one dark moment when I’ve decided the easiest thing would be just to forget the whole wedding idea, as it’s not worth this anxiety that I’m feeling. But in my better moments I know that’s just nonsense. I know that I’ve got a fine collection of mental buttons, and when something happens that pushes a particular mental button my stress levels shoot up and everything just feels totally difficult and overwhelming. The trick is to figure out which button is being pushed and try and deal with it. This is where the video comes in.

The lines in that song capture succinctly what I suspect I’m going through at the moment. It is about a guy who has seen himself as an outsider all his life who, after meeting someone, suddenly finds he is in with the in-crowd. And that’s exactly where I’m at. I’ve felt a member of the out-group my whole life – whether that’s because I was a Christian amongst the heathens at school, or a dreamy book-loving person among the jocks (or UK equivalent thereof), or a gay person at church, or as a creative person among programmers, or as a snarky cynical person amongst the sincere Christians, or a fairly conservative gay person among the party animals, or a Charismatic Christian among the Anglicans… the list goes on. It’s like whatever situation I’ve found myself in I’ve ended up on the edge of it.

Or, to put it another way, in the great party of life I’ve always found myself in the kitchen.

The trouble is I suspect that I’ve got so used to that particular role that I, consciously or otherwise, end up casting myself as the outsider wherever I am. It’s quite a nice safe place to be in some ways as it means you never really have to fully engage, and never really have to make yourself vulnerable. You just coast along. I think it’s just become easier for me to disqualify myself from fully participating with the world, than it is to try and fight my corner and force people to take me seriously for who I am.

But suddenly with getting married I’m suddenly in a position of full participation in the common currency of society – doing a big significant thing and demanding people take notice. And it’s all completely alien to me and it’s blowing my mind completely. This just isn’t the sort of thing I do.

The challenge for me now is to not hide away from this process. It’s difficult as it’s like I’m shedding a skin that I’ve gotten too comfortable in. It’ll be painful, but I know it’ll be worth it.