Misfits

What is it to be a misfit?

Are you one of those people who considers yourself one such person, or who keeps said parties at arms’ length? Is a misfit someone who doesn’t fit into society’s norms, or your own?

When you think about it, D.C. is a town of misfits. So few of its residents are from around here. In my own office, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and California are represented. Would we have come to Washington if we fit in, were comfortable with lives in our hometown? Talking with folks around D.C., once you get past the surface, there is a common thread of thought, though seldom expressed the same way twice. We didn’t feel we fit, so we fled. Washington is a strange city of unduly confident refugees.

Oh, how I remember my first semester at __C. To be fully accurate, I should say I remember being so culture shocked that I remember few details at all. Within days of my arrival, I recognized that no one shared my experience in marching band, newspaper, or drama – three of my high school passions – anywhere near the context I had been in for the last four years. There were a few whose horrified looks upon learning my background spoke much louder than their vocal chords ever could. You weren’t homeschooled? It was like I was from Mars, or worse.

But this too passed, and praise be to God, there were those who looked past my public school upbringing to see the many things we did have in common. They are now some of my best friends, and we’ve had some of the best time of our lives together; studying till insane hours of the morning in Nash, stolen hours at Market Street, campaigns galore, so many laughs and tears. We are family in our own right.

While many of these friendships have and will endure, my circle has expanded as I’ve started putting roots down in D.C. I’m on a first name basis with fellow Republican staffers, a couple lobbyists, and yes, even a few Democrat staffers. When conversations turn to their college days, as they inevitably do, I get a flashback of my early days at __C, for in that arena we have nothing in common. Of this I am heartily glad, and it is an opportunity to talk about why I chose __C and my current career path, but the look I get is the same. You what?

And then, there are moments in some Christian circles where being single seems to be the very definition of a misfit. When prayers of petition go straight from those struggling with long-term illness to “the singles,” the unintended implications can strike those who struggle with this apparent disease to the core.

With my predictable reactionary nature, I try to prove my normalcy. Rarely does this work. But I still try.

What it is this latent self-consciousness that strives to fit in, and be accepted? I don’t think it’s either wholly right or wholly wrong. We are made for community, for relationship, and at least some common goal or interest is essential for that to happen. Molding ourselves for other people – which, at the end of the day, comes from our own selfish need to be needed – is not. The line between the two cannot be categorized or easily referenced.

Sometimes I envy those who are so comfortable with who they are, or at least comfortable with not fitting in. I guess that all comes in living, in time, in experience, in learning to love others for who they are, and letting others love you for who you are, not just who you think you should be.

I suppose true pilgrims should be used to this.

Shows I have a long way to go.

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit:
He knows, he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.
~ John Bunyan