Adapting To Our Weird World

I’ve long been attracted to eccentrics. I’m guessing that this attraction is due to my own eccentricities. In school, I hung out with other weird kids as we shared our social exile from the rest of the crowd. We weren’t bad nor unruly, we just had different interests than most everyone else. Each of us was also infamous for some physical trait.

One friend, Perry, wore a prosthetic leg because he had been injured in a car wreck as a young boy. Danny had a severe case of acne. Marty was an effeminate genius who tried unsuccessfully to hide his gentle nature. I was the awkward redhead whose bright carrot top attracted the scorn of the bullies. Together, we found strength in numbers.

This writer believes many of my insights and observations about people and stuff derive from being an outcast from mainstream society as a gay man. Shunning led me into becoming a religious, spiritual renegade. This empowered me from a young age to think and imagine outside the box of orthodox belief systems. The journey was supercharged by religious condemnation of people like me that continues in many belief systems to this day. I learned that how we are born and how we behave far outweigh what is believed by society.

The ostracization from mainstream belief systems that offered no authentic, unconditional refuge, propelled a journey of studying religions and various manifestations of spirituality. There is also the reality of spiritual gatekeeping and exclusivity present in many belief-based institutions that do not jibe with the vastness and variety in our world. Yet some tenents of a few religious systems remain in my “spiritual toolbox”.

Because many of us in the LGBTQ world grew up as shunned, weird folks we found strength in our differences. We discovered that it’s not only OK to be different, but we found ourselves through discovery and authenticity. We respond to the call of social adventure and strike out on our paths with gladness in our hearts.

Mythical paradigms and analogies come close to describing our happy, weird genre. There are Batman and Robin; Buddha and Ananda; the Chinese hermits; and Knights of the Roundtable to name a few. We understand that a transformation of the world away from toxicity is in the cards. We cannot help but feel inspired. Not all of us feel this way, but enough of us have become justice warriors for our cause and others.

Our varieties of weirdness make us political and religious targets. That’s OK to a point, because social resistance to unconventionality helps us develop more strength. We know that our inborn unconventionality is not only real, but is a lovely gift to be treasured and utilized. During the journey, we realize that nearly everybody is weird in their own peculiar ways. I know people from many walks of life who have deadpan senses of humor. Other people like to clown around. Humor begins with the unusual, so why not laugh with others and not at others?

I hope that in some small way that my freaky perspective might have some positive influence on people’s perceptions and relationships to the Universe and with one another. Although there is plenty of ambiguity finding harbor in everyone’s minds, it’s wonderful to embrace it along with the eccentricity and nonconformity present in the real world. We grow by accepting the ups and downs, paradoxes, and puzzlements of our weird world. To do so is to actively practice the art of love.

Namaste

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes lead singer of the rock band “Heart”, Ann Wilson. “Just being out in the world, you see so many things, and every day, you experience so many concepts and different people and their coolness and weirdness. It’s a feast of ideas.”