I keep searching for ‘my people’ on a planet where I’m the alien

I keep being reminded that I don’t fit in this place.

That thought is always in the back of my mind. I’ve felt it for most of my life. But there are certain days when it seems as though the reminders are everywhere. After another one of those days Thursday, I am feeling incredibly alone tonight.

Again.

Nothing bad happened to me Thursday. Nobody rejected me or insulted me. I didn’t have an argument with anybody. Instead, I had two perfectly friendly conversations with people I’ve known for years, but I walked away from them feeling strangely depressed and isolated.

The specifics of the conversations don’t matter. In fact, explaining them would probably sidetrack what I have to say onto different issues. Neither person said anything shocking or offensive. They both simply expressed perfectly ordinary assumptions about life and the world around us — assumptions which wouldn’t have seemed noteworthy to most people.

But those two conversations jerked me back to reality. They reminded me that I’m the alien here.

Within the space of about half an hour Thursday afternoon, I had two separate reminders of just how differently I see the world than most of the people around me do. I was reminded of how casually people can hold beliefs which seem contradictory to me. I was reminded of how completely people can accept cultural habits and assumptions without ever seeming to question why they live the way they do.

Part of me wants to yell at them. Part of me wants to call them stupid. Part of me wants to argue sense into them by explaining things they don’t want to hear.

But I can’t be angry with them, because I understand the forces that have shaped their beliefs. Some of the issues are cultural and technological. Among the many issues is how the human brain resolves intellectual conflicts when emotions are involved.

In many ways, it would be easier if I didn’t understand the intellectual and psychological forces that shape what I saw. But the truth is that I do see and I do understand. And I know that I can’t change how people think and how they react to the cultural forces around them.

None of this is new to me. I’ve been writing about these things for years. I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to understand why our culture seems so dysfunctional to me and why so many things that seem normal to other people seem insane to me. I’ve written endlessly about politics and culture and technology and relationships and meaning and the ways in which I think modern life is making us less human.

I didn’t learn anything Thursday that I didn’t already know. I just had one of those moments when something I know intellectually suddenly became painfully real on an emotional level.

I don’t expect most people to agree with me. I gave up on that expectation a long time ago. I don’t even want everybody to agree with me, because I’m perfectly aware that I’m wrong about plenty of things. I have blind spots, and there are contradictions in my own unexamined thinking. (And I can think of a couple of examples in which I have actual contradictions in my views and I simply can’t resolve them, so I accept them for what they are.)

But I desperately want to find more people who share enough of my fundamental assumptions about life that I don’t feel as though I’m constantly translating myself into a language which everybody else can understand.

I want people who care about ideas and who are willing to examine whether their beliefs make sense. I want people who are suspicious of things which everybody else accepts simply because those things seem normal. I want people who read and think and create. I want people who care about freedom even when other people use that freedom in ways they dislike. I want people who care about truth and beauty and meaning. I want people who are trying to understand themselves and become better human beings.

I want people who look at this dysfunctional culture and don’t simply ask how we can win control of it. I want people who ask whether there might be a better way to live.

I know plenty of people who have some of those qualities. I know people who share my ideas about individual freedom but have little interest in the intellectual and spiritual questions which consume me. I know Christians who share my faith but who see politics and culture in ways which seem completely foreign to me. I know intelligent and educated people who have no interest in questioning the assumptions of modern mass culture. I know people who understand some of the things which matter most to me, but I rarely find people who understand enough of the whole for me to feel that sense of intellectual kinship I crave.

I don’t say that as a criticism of any of them. They have every right to care about whatever matters to them and to live in whatever ways make sense to them. The world doesn’t owe me a supply of people who happen to share my peculiar combination of values and interests.

But knowing that doesn’t make the loneliness disappear.

I’ve written before about feeling like an alien in this culture. I’ve written about my desire to find people who want to build something better instead of spending our lives fighting over control of what already exists. I’ve written about my longing for genuine community. These aren’t new ideas and I don’t have any new answers tonight.

I’m simply feeling the need for that community more painfully than usual.

There are times when I can happily spend hours alone reading and thinking and writing. I don’t need constant company and I’ve never needed a huge circle of friends. I’m not looking for a busy social calendar or a crowd of people to keep me entertained. What I’m missing is something much more specific.

I want intellectual and spiritual companionship. I want the experience of talking with someone and realizing that I don’t have to explain every assumption behind what I’m saying. I want to be part of a small community of people who are serious about trying to live differently and live better.

I don’t know where to find that.

That’s not a new realization. It’s not a question I suddenly thought to ask tonight. I’ve been asking it for years, and I’ve never found an answer which satisfies me.

Most days, I can put that question aside and get on with whatever I’m doing. I can read another book. I can write another essay. I can make something. I can enjoy the people who are already part of my life for exactly who they are instead of expecting them to be something they’re not.

But every now and then, something happens which reminds me just how much I’m missing.

That happened Thursday.

I don’t need to persuade the world to see things my way. I don’t need to start a movement. I don’t need millions of followers or thousands of admirers. I’m not looking for people who will agree with everything I say.

I just desperately need to find more of the people who feel like “home” to me.

I know you’re out there. I just don’t know how to find you.