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Friends United Meeting |
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September 1998
Insider/Outsider-Itis
by Patricia Briggs
As a teenager and young adult I would often ponder why I seemed so different from my parents and brothers. My eyes could see the outward signs of our commonness, the similar facial features and our above-average height. But the similarities pertaining to the essence of who we were-our personalities, our lifestyles and our dreams-were hidden from me. Seeking a sense of belonging, that innate compulsion to "fit in" somewhere, I felt like an outsider. I ached to step in and be welcomed.
It would take me many years to recognize that I do have similarities with my parents, from simple things like my mother's laugh and my father's enjoyment of old movies, to the more complex. I share my mother's need for cleanliness and organization, and my father's sense of making memories. I recall his scouting out the grocery store while we were on vacation so we could indulge in some local flavor...his finishing touch for our Christmas dinner-fancy green ice cream!
Realizing I have something in common with my family makes me feel less of an outsider. In fact, it allows me to open their gate, shout "Hello! I'm home!"
As I taste the sweetness of this sense of belonging, I look beyond my family scenario into a world fraught with insider/outsider-itis. It's like a weed out of control, ever tireless, affecting humans of all ages.
One needs only to listen while monitoring a group of preschool or elementary age children. Here, you'll most likely encounter the words "You're not my friend." I remember my daughter, upon moving to a new town, coming home from her first day at middle school...in tears. Melissa, a seasoned veteran of many moves and many schools during her short life, was shaken and caught off-guard by the unfriendly welcome she had encountered that day. It was a new experience for her, but not a fun one.
Labels of "in" or "out" carry on through high school and beyond. In my high school we had the labels of "jocks," "freaks," and "brains." I didn't belong in any of them because my sports were intramural not interscholastic; I steered clear of the freaks even though I wanted to speak up and tell them I was tired of their smoking in the bathroom; and, even though we kept each other in constant company, my friends were taking the honors course, not I. I didn't receive a label-nor did I belong.
Insider/outsider-itis is everywhere. Arlie Hoschschild, a sociology professor at the University of California-Berkeley and the author of The Time Bind, has discovered that women are feeling like insiders at work but outsiders at home. Work has become a form of home, where they feel the most appreciated and most truly themselves, while home has become work, due to its baffling emotional demands including divorce, child-rearing, elderly parents and blended families.
In her book Dakota-A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris writes about deeply-rooted farm families. "The saddest story I know was of an encounter between two 'insiders,' one a longtime town resident, the wife of a retired rancher, the other the patriarch of one of the oldest farm families in the area. The man had been working desperately during what was supposed to be his retirement in an attempt to keep his son from going bankrupt." From her spotless living room, only fifteen miles from the patriarch's farm, she declared firmly, "There is no farm crisis." With those words she pushed him out of his insider status because he was floundering and it wasn't acceptable. They were now worlds apart.
Matthew Stevenson, in his article "Abroad" from The American Scholar, shared a story of his family's move from Brooklyn, New York, USA, to a farming village outside Geneva, Switzerland. "Since moving to the village, we have tried our best to mix locally. Our two daughters attend the local school. We go to all the village fetes-holidays celebrated with town suppers-and we buy bread each morning in the small boulangerie. In turn, the village has been gracious in accepting us. But in Switzerland, we could live in the village for three generations, take up farming, drive a small four-cylinder Renault, and still we would be known as the newcomers, or perhaps, Les Americains."
Why insider/outsider-itis flourishes, I don't know. I can only speculate that the sense of belonging, having something in common with others, must be so terrific that those insiders are oblivious to the pain they're causing the outsiders. We all want love, affection, friendship, even acceptance. And when those hopes seem impossible to obtain, we grieve and ask ourselves, "What's wrong? Why don't we fit in? Why don't we belong?" Some continue to seek a place of belonging while others just seem to quit.
Insiders, by reversing their practices, and using the Motel 6 adage of leaving the light on for visitors, could become a group of welcoming greeters. An extended hand-shaking policy would allow the path to their gate to be well-traveled. They would be putting into practice what Jesus so patiently tried to teach through his stories. By unlocking and opening gates, by rendering labels obsolete and by welcoming visitors they would be stepping into Jesus' footsteps. What better place to be?
Queries:
Do our monthly meetings emulate the love Jesus had for all humankind by leaving the lights on for the new and strange?
Do our monthly meetings welcome those who enter through its doors, promoting a sense of belonging in conjunction with diversity?
Patricia M. Briggs is a writer and a mother of four children. She is a member of Chatham Friends Meeting, North Carolina.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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