For a long time, my life story was the typical outcast story. Then an insight changed how I saw my childhood: being pushed away by society isn’t arbitrary, and it isn’t a punishment. Once I saw that, much of the heaviness lifted, and I felt compassion for people I thought had wronged me.
It started when I went to school at seven. I wasn’t good at sitting still, paying attention or following instructions. My teacher was always upset with me, and I didn’t fit in with the other kids. Later, when I built online businesses, that same non-conformity turned out to be useful, because a completely new field needed out-of-the-box thinking.
The bigger gift came later. I saw how much time, money and mental bandwidth people spend trying to please complete strangers, and how often they deny their authentic interests out of fear of what others will think. Giving up on fitting in so young sent me down a path of individuation early.
On a bigger scale, I think societies crowd around shared values and traditions built on what worked in the past. The world keeps changing, so we systematically push some people out. In the wilderness they find new ideas and tools, and the crowd needs what they bring back. Belonging brings comfort and security, but also conformity and inflexibility. Being an outcast costs loneliness and risk, and it pays in knowledge and insight.
Knowing what I know now, I would sign up to be an outcast. So how can I be mad at the people who pushed me out? What I feel instead is a desire to pay them back. That’s what I mean when I say we do this for each other.