Are we outsiders no matter where we live?
“If you feel like an outsider, you tend to observe things a lot more.” — quote from Anderson Cooper, an American broadcast journalist.
Definitions:
Outsider: 1. A person who does not belong to nor is not accepted as part of a particular group. 2. The one who has to learn how to enter.
Insider: 1. A person who belongs to and is accepted as part of a group. 2. The one who has learned how to stay.
Would you be surprised to learn RuPaul, has said his whole career came from being the outsider kid. Madonna, has talked about feeling she was a weird kid from the Midwest who didn’t belong and Taylor Swift, wrote about it at 13 years old in “A Place in this World” and she still writes about it now in “You’re on your own kid”. They all have YouTube shorts speaking about how they felt like an outsider. When I went online to research this thought I was surprised at how many YouTubes there are on this subject. And after listening to many of the stories I learned being an Outsider is not such a bad thing.
But really, who in their life has not felt as an Outsider? I believe this feeling begins in school where groups are formed. That’s the first time we learn the world has tables we are not invited to. I thought as I got older I would outgrow this feeling. But, it seems I don’t. I just have older tables.
I have felt detached my entire life. I am a woman who questions everything and gets bored easily. I enjoy being with people individually, not in groups. Because in groups, my outsider comes into play. And then there are what I call my unfiltered time bomb conversations. Where after I have spoken my mind I wonder if the people I am meeting share my values. Nothing worse than a misplaced story.
Last week, my husband and I were included at a dinner party here in Puerto Rico. Five couples and us. Before we ate, each person stood and gave a short speech about being grateful for their 40+ years of friendship. How beautiful. And how familiar to me as a outsider. I felt I was in a time warp, and time had slipped by with no long term memories as they shared.
It’s not just group settings that can make you feel other. It could be shopping as well. When I was in college, Starbucks had just opened. It was the first coffee shop where the menu selections were vastly different from anything we knew. I wrote a paper called “Can an outsider understand the Starbucks menu? Over a six-week period, I conducted observational research each morning at eight o’clock. Seated near the register with a tall soy latte to observe customer behavior. My findings indicated that older patrons frequently struggled to interpret the menu’s combination options and the proprietary size terminology, including tall, grande, and venti. And forget the combinations, that was really out of their reach. My conclusion was the older generations would be outsiders to the language and branding of Starbucks.
Language is its own barrier. Living a country where the majority of residents speak Spanish is a daily reminder of being an outsider. Walking alone into a new bookclub or joining a new organization where everyone already knows each other, is another. Yet, what I have learned on YouTube is being an outsider is actually not a bad thing because outsiders think out of the box. I’ve come to realize being an outsider isn’t a flaw. When you’re on the outside you’re free to connect differently to learn faster ways to survive groups. Outsiders bring something new to the table that no one else thought of. I recall when we first moved to Old San Juan, I met a woman who invited us to her home for a get together. She laughed and said we would be ” fresh meat. ” In other words, we would bring a new experience for them, too. That’s when it clicked for me. Being an outsider isn’t just about feeling out of place. I have always felt that I just don’t fit in, but sometimes I’m exactly what the room was waiting for.