TRANSCRIPT
A few months back, I was hitchhiking in a random country in a random region of the world. I just arrived at my destination, and I met a young couple from a different country. We spoke the same language, and we fell into conversation about our lives. What I found most interesting about them, as we talked—and we talked for about a half an hour—was that they were extremely average. Average jobs. They looked average. They sounded average. And they prided themselves on being average. I could just feel it. There was just something so average about them.
And I remember when I talked about myself, I could feel they were deeply disapproving of me. I can’t say they actually thought I was crazy, but I think they did kind of think I was crazy. Crazy in their world being not average, outside of the box, outside of the box in which they lived. And I remember as I listened to them talk about their lives, where everything they said was average. Their vacation was average. The way that they rented a car was average. The places that they went on their trip were average. Their home lives were average. Their relationships with their families were average. Their religion was average. Their money was average. Their clothes were average.
I was thinking about, well, why would they like to be that way? I was thinking about the value of being average for them. And in contrast, I was thinking about how difficult it is to not be average. I think I wanted to be average for a long time. Actually, I think what I really wanted to be was slightly above average. That’s what I really wanted. I wanted to be popular. I wanted the average people to like me and respect me and accept me. I wanted some average girl later, some average woman to like me and love me and be in a partnership with me.
And I really tried to be average slash above average. And I just wasn’t very good at it. It wasn’t who I was. It wasn’t the way that I thought. It wasn’t the way that I felt. It just wasn’t my character. That’s not who, for whatever reason, I was born to be. And that’s certainly not how I developed as I continued to grow.
And I learned as time went on that it was really, really painful to not be average, to be really different. I was alienated. I didn’t fit into my culture. I didn’t fit into my world. I didn’t know the right things to say in social situations because the things that spontaneously came to my lips made people uncomfortable, just like I made this very average, bland couple uncomfortable.
But I think of this value in being average, of fitting in, of being a part of a culture where you are a cog in the wheel, where you don’t have to think too much, where you don’t have much perspective on what is going on in our totally screwed up, crazy world. Well, in our very screwed up historical families and in our own selves, very average people, this is why I think this is really the truth of being average. You don’t think about that stuff. You don’t really care. You don’t want to look within. You don’t want to look at your history. You don’t want to look at your families. You don’t want to criticize your parents. That goes against the norm. That goes against society. That goes against everything. And that goes against comfort.
There’s something very comfortable about being average. There’s something dead about it. That’s what I also thought about this couple that I was sitting with. They were dead to me. It was like my part of the conversation was like doing CPR on them. It was like I was full of electricity. Certainly after hitchhiking, I’m like very empowered with energy and thoughts and experiences. I’ve been living on the edge of life. Being in wild places could be anywhere in the world. It’s like right on the edge of life, on the edge of culture, on the edge of language. Don’t know what’s going to happen. Amazing. Meeting amazing people.
And then here I am, contrasting my existence against two people who, well, they’re like oatmeal. And it’s like my electricity is going into them, and they’re absorbing it with their insulation, and they don’t like it. It would be interesting in this video if I could suddenly cut to them right now and listen to the conversation they had after we parted ways and they went on to see the tourist destinations that their little guidebook said one should see in this country, and I went back to the road to try to find a place where I could set up my tent and camp.
I imagine what they said. “Oh, that guy’s kind of weird, kind of strange. That’s very dangerous what he’s doing. Well, we might read about him in the news.” Or maybe they just looked at each other and said, “Let’s just not talk about that. This guy makes us uncomfortable.” And I also think, yeah, how I did want to be average. Couldn’t do it. Didn’t fit in. It didn’t work for me. Average people didn’t like me, and in the end, I really didn’t like them that much. We were not sympatico, and it just got worse as my life went on, trying to process the pain of my childhood with my very screwed up parents, my screwed up ancestry, going to therapy and finding average therapists who average people told me, “Oh, we’re great. This is a great therapist. This person really is wise and insightful.”
And going to some office with a therapist who dressed the right way and looked the right way and had the right age and had the right greyness in their hair and said the right things and charged the right amounts and had the right degrees on the wall and said yes. Yes. And said that they understood me and knew how to fake it really well. And the truth is, had no clue about me and didn’t like me and was just as average as these boring people I met out in the world and took my money and cashed my checks and could offer me nothing and instead just made me feel insecure and made me feel crazy, like, “Oh my god, the person who I’m paying to understand me and to hear me and mirror me is not doing it.”
And realizing eventually I had to escape from the clutches of this average person who was going to use all of the power of their role to try to make me average. Except one therapist who was wise enough in his own average way to figure out that he wasn’t going to be able to make me average, that I was too powerful for him. So he fired me, got rid of me, and gave me a bunch of lies about why he had to fire me. But I could feel it underneath. I terrified him. I threatened him. The electricity of my non-average self terrified him.
Do I sound grandiose saying all this? Do I sound like, “Woo, I’m such a big shot. I’m so not average?” Grandiosity being this thin skin of a false self that is covering a huge amount of insecurity and denial. Now, grandiosity is really just a projected image of being exceptional. That’s really hiding a very average person. I don’t think so. Don’t think I’m grandiose. It would be easier to be grandiose than what I am.
So, therapists, yeah, to realize that and then also to make my parents so uncomfortable such that they hated me. The more I started to embody the truth of who I was, the more I spoke out about who I was and did what they had always said I should do, which was be myself. But really, they wanted me to be them. They wanted me to be a reflection of them, to be very, very shut down but not even be aware of it.
And the more I was honest and true in a spontaneous way, some gift that life endowed me with, the more it terrified them because it reminded them of how lost and confused and despairing and unprocessed and immature they were and how much they had compromised to keep some deadened and average relationship with their traumatizing, screwed up, unhealthy, average parents, going all the way back through the generations. And eventually, they got rid of me too. And eventually, at the same time, I realized I have to get away from these people. I have to be around people who are more like me. And if I can’t find such people and for…
A long time I couldn’t find such people. I just have to be with myself, and I have to figure out how to love myself for who I really am. And if I can’t express who I really am out in the world, the truth of me, bigger me, then I’ll just have to write about it in my journal, clumsy as it might be.
And I was clumsy for many, many years. I go back and read my journal from 20, 30 years ago, and I had a lot of rough edges and a lot of rage and anger that I don’t have now. Am I angry now? Sometimes. Sure, I’m angry now. Sometimes I have frustrations and pain about how sick the world is, about how sick people are raising their children, about how average people call the shots and have the power politically and religiously, etc., etc.
How so many average parents are breaking their exceptional children or breaking the exceptional sides of their children to make them average, to make them be bland, to make them fit in and be good little students and good little workers and good little drones who will go on mindlessly manning the machines of the world while everything around us goes to hell, while nature gets destroyed.
I believe we need more exceptional people in this crazy world. I know we need more exceptional people. In fact, I know that the exceptional people in this world are the only ones who can save us.