Standing out in a crowd

I’ve always found myself at the precipice of gaining popularity and pissing people off at the same time. As a natural loner, I would often break free from a societal system, group or loose community. I often suffered, feeling that I needed to conform to social norms, but similarly yearning for people ‘who got me’. Then somehow I would ‘find my tribe’. But not for long.

Always an outsider, finding my way to an inner circle, growing as a person, then pissing people off and moving on. Like a hippie born into a Christian, traditional family. Leaving that stifling environment seeking freedom and progressives. But then a whole bunch of us hippies would form a commune, and I would transition into wanting discipline, deodorant (not natural - it doesn’t work), boundaries, structure, material wealth and a picket fence family, and poof that hippie group was gone too. Then back to the suburbs, but also changed as a person. I’ve done this my whole life. Yet, strangely, those very close relationships i form (I count them on my one hand), I keep for decades.

I am also a South African child of 20th century mass media, technicolor and TV soap operas, brought up in quite a conservative environment. In my teens I went screw you, and joined pirate radio. And when pirate radio grew up and became Aubrey Marcus-esque / GOOP podcasts / a new mass media, so I found myself getting grossed out, and coming back to my roots. And then stuck somewhere in between. 

But in between was a group too, of those irritating assholes who always play devil’s advocate, only trying to be right. So I needed to move on from that too (I still have that patronizing personality lurking in me). It’s quite funny now to think that I could be unique in the world, and stand out from a crowd. There is a crowd / group for every interest. When it comes to any major cultural war / issue, I mostly find myself in both camps now. This often pains me, as I’ll gain fans on one side of an issue, and then piss them off 5 min later, as I change sides / embrace both / neither.I guess this world is one of nuance, complexity and paradox.

Now I think I feel more empowered but quite lonely. I do miss groups, but I can only show my full self about 50% of the time. Which is fine to watch the rugby with mates, or go for a weekend retreat. I don’t miss feeling more superior, or enlightened than others. Even though my ego tells me so all the time. But I am looking for my next tribe. A niche within a niche of open minded, highly capable folks who can hold together the complexities of family, career, relationships and inter weave a wisdom in a complex world I haven’t learnt yet. So, here I am keen to meet my new tribe again.