Bill Hicks once said (maybe a few
times) that “when two or more people agree on an issue I form a line on the
other side.” He also said, “I get a kick out of being the outsider constantly;
it allows me to be creative.”
If I am to
be free, I must stand up for what’s right no matter the cost. However, when I do
the right thing, my life tends to get worse or I become more & more
separated from people. Isolation is a scary place sometimes, but it’s a
necessary emptiness to avoid having to do the right thing all the time. The struggle
is, for me, very real. I wear headphones when I go to public places most of the
time because I cannot listen to people being mean. When I see or hear injustices,
great or small, I have this compulsion to speak up & take action. I am
afraid that my actions of integrity will have terrible consequences for me, of
course, but also for those involved. An atom bomb is useful for destroying its
target, but the fallout is enormous. Since I cannot stand idly by, I isolate.
I have become
very comfortable living alone, but that was forced on me as a child & again
with an empty nest. One of the families that I lived with while growing up would
ground me to my room, sometimes for a month at a time. A few of the other
families that I lived with would leave for long periods of time, again, leaving
me to fend for myself. Even my natural mother, who loved me the only way she
knew how, left me with strangers. I pushed my children out of the nest with my ideologies,
but some of that was their own quest for independence. So, living alone is
familiar (I find it intriguing that the root word is family); it’s like an old
friend. Although I can have a complete thought, use the phone, watch the tellie,
& come & go as I please without interference from outside influences, I
still miss people.
Therein lays
the conundrum. If I believe Paul’s warning in his letter to the Romans, then I am
not to conform to this worldly realm, but “. . . be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, & acceptable,
& perfect, will of God” (Romans
12:2 KJV). Even though I have a strong desire to attach myself to other
humans, my soul has always screamed louder. I’ve always known that I don’t fit
in or belong anywhere, & I am discovering that my mind has only recently
become my own. It wasn’t the renewing of my mind that needed to happen for me.
It was/is a shedding of societal, religious, & cultural dogma. Mayhaps it’s
a rose by another name?
I want to be
connected, but every time I become part of a group, organization, church, &
yes, even families, I feel like I am letting them chip away at my soul. In
order to be accepted with any human cluster I must comply with their rules or
unspoken expectations. It’s the “sit down & shut up,” or the “just smile
& look pretty” mentality, & “I would rather die on my feet than live on
my knees” (Euripides).
Conformity is not an option for me. When
I tell people that I cannot kowtow, most respond with, “you can’t, or you won’t?”
& “it’s a give & take, a compromise.” While the Oxford
Dictionary defines “compromise” as “an agreement [sic] of a dispute that is
reached by each side making concessions,” it also describes it as weakening or
harming “by accepting standards that are lower than [sic] desired.” I simply cannot
compromise my spirit.
“Never, never
be afraid to do what is right, especially if the well-being of a person or
animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we
inflict on our soul when we look the other way.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
