Membership and Belonging
In thinking about this post, I make heavy reference to a speech given by C.S. Lewis in 1944. If you haven't read it, go read it or at least skim it now. Here.
Depending on where we met, you probably know me as a wannabe. I am basically always hanging around just outside some social circle, claiming friendships I don't have, trying to be one of the cool kids but never quite getting in. In some cases I've done this so long that I've become an accepted fixture--BSFFA was one, the Starbucks I work at is another--so that I almost function as a member of an inner ring, except as a junior member.
This isn't something I particularly like about myself, but although it occasionally makes me petty it doesn't usually make me evil, so I'm not terribly ashamed of it, either. On days when my self-respect is doing all right, I don't mind being externally pathetic. To a certain extent, someone has to do it.
(What I do mind about myself is that if I am, for whatever reason, part of the governing circle of a social gathering, long- or short-term, I tend to tear it apart. It happens (passive voice) in different ways--I plan an event poorly; I'm outright mean to the most vulnerable member; I run down the skills of all participants (myself included) instead of building them up; I literally or figuratively go to sleep. I can be a decent subordinate, but I am a terrible leader. I become a bully. Don't know why. That goes in the category of things I can work on. (Unless you have self-identified as a bully, I am not really interested in your advice on this subject and will take offers of advice as condescending. This is how I respond to things I'm ashamed of. Also, for the love of Dog don't tell me I'm a lovely person.))
This week I've been thinking a lot about three groups I'm on the edges of right now. One is obviously ORUCC. One is the friendship network in my workplace. And one is a protest-folk band.
I take religion very seriously. I show up to church regularly, I go to a lot of the adult-education things they offer, I take notes on the sermons and talk them over with my parents and Carl every week. But I'm not inner ring there, and my parents kind of are. For one thing, my attendance has been sporadic when you look at the past decade; for another, since I'm not a member, I can't vote in the elections; yet another, my schedule is erratic so I don't serve on committees. And I don't sing well enough, or have the time, to join the choir. (Besides, they practice on Wednesdays.) I frequently wish I were still a child when I am in church. Our children's music programming (DRUMS!) looks like a lot of fun. But I'm not the only person who feels left out in church because other people get invited to do the readings or say the opening prayers or perform "special music" over the summer while the choir is in recess. Since the decisions are handled socially and informally, if you are socially inept enough you can get ignored. Two things happened this week that made me feel utterly rejected, valueless and invisible. If I were a teenager, everyone would rush to affirm me and make a place for me. But I'm thirty; I guess I'm supposed to have figured out how to make a place for myself by now. Ultimately, that's a fair call. I'm way more stable now than I was at sixteen. I can accept that I have to put time and service in to get recognition out, that there's no shortcut, and that the people I respect have been doing this for DECADES. But the pillars of this church always seem monolithic to me: forty to seventy, teachers or nurses, in stable partnerships with kids and grandkids. I feel demographically different from these people, even though officially and in some of the informal senses I'm their peer.
I have the same problem in the band. I'm the youngest member by at least ten years. There's one other woman, but she isn't able to attend every practice, and when she's not there I am basically constantly oppressed by the feeling that I'm 18 and wearing a pink bikini, and her presence only allows me the dignity of putting on a T-shirt. (Side note, there have been times when this feeling would be exacerbated by the levels of availability I project when I'm not in a happy relationship, but luckily this isn't one of them. Carl is the best and I don't even want other people in my fantasies these days.) When I'm alone with her, I'm fine, I feel like myself and I genuinely like her and feel like we can be good friends with some time investment. When I'm with any of the other members... I have that feeling where I have to manually arrange my face muscles to form expressions. Like should I be making sad face now? Attentive face? Am I staring? Am I threatening his dominance? Humans don't show their bellies, do they?
In both cases I alternately become inaudible and overly-deferential, and act up (clown, misbehave, demand attention) in more or less acceptable ways. There is no middle ground where I'm just myself, doing stuff I like to do. Yes, I'm aware that it's a cycle, but that doesn't help. "Relax and be yourself" is about as useful as "bring that fever down." As with the fever, I know some things help, like getting enough sleep and exercise and eating right, but that's not a cure.
Two other things will help--tenure and skill. I have to keep showing up to church and practice. Some of the social contacts and trust will develop that way. I got the invitation to be in the band at all after I played concertina outside in below-zero weather and had been showing up to the Wednesday night song circle for a while. I am slowly developing personal connections with church members independent of my parents. As I get familiar with the rhythms of the groups and how things are done, I will make fewer faux pas that mark me as an outsider. That's cool, I can accept that. I can also accept that practicing the concertina in my spare time will make me feel better about band practice. As I get more comfortable on my instrument and can follow more casual instructions at the same level as everyone else, I will interact in the same way they do and be closer to acceptance. Also totally cool.
But.
Though those things make me better at faking it, they don't really solve the shut down/act up dichotomy, or make me personally comfortable with people. In the pre-service discussion thing at church yesterday, the pastor made an off-hand comment that I found completely incorrect. He said, in reference to "high school" feelings of being excluded from cliques, that eventually you realize it's all internal. You know what? NO YOU DON'T. Because you know what? It isn't all internal! No offense to the pastor who is speaking a bit of wisdom--the internal component is significant--and from his own experience as an educated, athletic, tall white man, but if you have acne, or you're overweight, or you're the only women in the room, or you're TEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, sometimes people just ignore you, even when you are being assertive. And once someone's ignored you, there's not actually a polite, non-intrusive way to say "I just said that." Correcting someone higher-status than yourself is rude because they are prima facie more correct than you are, so how dare you challenge them. And other people in the room have skewed likeliness to perceive reality as the higher-status person presents it.
You can say, "Zee, you have social anxiety." Sure whatever. My maladaptive social reactions are learned responses from how people treat me. You know why I'm more comfortable being around the other woman in my band? It's not because I'm more comfortable around women--witness my stunning ineptitude with the grandes dames of my church--it's because she looks me in the eye and treats me like my opinions are interesting. She treats me like a thirty-year-old with a graduate degree, not like a gifted but self-important eighteen-year-old. This is one thing I got from sleeping around in 2012: while seducing a person, I treat myself as their equal. It makes me wish I could seduce the people I am intimidated by, even though I don't find them attractive. This does not make interacting with them any less awkward.
You don't have to listen when I talk, O Generic Reader on the Internet. I'm really flattered when people comment and say they found my reflections worth reading, but this is a LiveJournal and I understand that some of what I write will be boring. I expect things I write here to be judged on their merit, so it's totally cool to like some and not others. It's less cool when I ask, "Is this an appropriate song to add to the setlist for this gig?" and no one answers me either way. It's less cool when I've been trying to get on the speaker's list for five turns and then start talking and get shut down in favor of someone who just put his hand up. (Although I understand why that one happened, because that guy was very quiet and needed encouragement.)
Coda: being older than everyone doesn't help either. I'm now the oldest employee at the Starbucks where I work (I think, I haven't asked all the new people), edging out the assistant manager by a few months and the manager by three years. I spend all my time feeling like I'm 40, wearing sweatpants and with curlers in my hair, which is actually an improvement on the bikini I guess. The other guy about my age successfully clowns; I don't successfully anything.
So here's the tl;dr. At the end of his speech, Lewis argues that the best lifestyle is a lifestyle of quiet competence and friendship with the other quiet competent people. I think that only works if you're in a structural position where other people are willing to recognize your competence, and for most things, you need tutors who are willing to recognize your potential for competence and answer the questions you actually ask instead of repeating advice that addresses a problem you don't have. And that takes a bit of maneuvering if you are in any way structurally subordinate. To be fair, to an MIT graduating class in 1944, Lewis was probably correct to give advice on the side of humility.
And this is the personal side of my thoughts on acceptance and friendship from the previous post. More stuff on the specific religious aspect to come, I suppose.
Depending on where we met, you probably know me as a wannabe. I am basically always hanging around just outside some social circle, claiming friendships I don't have, trying to be one of the cool kids but never quite getting in. In some cases I've done this so long that I've become an accepted fixture--BSFFA was one, the Starbucks I work at is another--so that I almost function as a member of an inner ring, except as a junior member.
This isn't something I particularly like about myself, but although it occasionally makes me petty it doesn't usually make me evil, so I'm not terribly ashamed of it, either. On days when my self-respect is doing all right, I don't mind being externally pathetic. To a certain extent, someone has to do it.
(What I do mind about myself is that if I am, for whatever reason, part of the governing circle of a social gathering, long- or short-term, I tend to tear it apart. It happens (passive voice) in different ways--I plan an event poorly; I'm outright mean to the most vulnerable member; I run down the skills of all participants (myself included) instead of building them up; I literally or figuratively go to sleep. I can be a decent subordinate, but I am a terrible leader. I become a bully. Don't know why. That goes in the category of things I can work on. (Unless you have self-identified as a bully, I am not really interested in your advice on this subject and will take offers of advice as condescending. This is how I respond to things I'm ashamed of. Also, for the love of Dog don't tell me I'm a lovely person.))
This week I've been thinking a lot about three groups I'm on the edges of right now. One is obviously ORUCC. One is the friendship network in my workplace. And one is a protest-folk band.
I take religion very seriously. I show up to church regularly, I go to a lot of the adult-education things they offer, I take notes on the sermons and talk them over with my parents and Carl every week. But I'm not inner ring there, and my parents kind of are. For one thing, my attendance has been sporadic when you look at the past decade; for another, since I'm not a member, I can't vote in the elections; yet another, my schedule is erratic so I don't serve on committees. And I don't sing well enough, or have the time, to join the choir. (Besides, they practice on Wednesdays.) I frequently wish I were still a child when I am in church. Our children's music programming (DRUMS!) looks like a lot of fun. But I'm not the only person who feels left out in church because other people get invited to do the readings or say the opening prayers or perform "special music" over the summer while the choir is in recess. Since the decisions are handled socially and informally, if you are socially inept enough you can get ignored. Two things happened this week that made me feel utterly rejected, valueless and invisible. If I were a teenager, everyone would rush to affirm me and make a place for me. But I'm thirty; I guess I'm supposed to have figured out how to make a place for myself by now. Ultimately, that's a fair call. I'm way more stable now than I was at sixteen. I can accept that I have to put time and service in to get recognition out, that there's no shortcut, and that the people I respect have been doing this for DECADES. But the pillars of this church always seem monolithic to me: forty to seventy, teachers or nurses, in stable partnerships with kids and grandkids. I feel demographically different from these people, even though officially and in some of the informal senses I'm their peer.
I have the same problem in the band. I'm the youngest member by at least ten years. There's one other woman, but she isn't able to attend every practice, and when she's not there I am basically constantly oppressed by the feeling that I'm 18 and wearing a pink bikini, and her presence only allows me the dignity of putting on a T-shirt. (Side note, there have been times when this feeling would be exacerbated by the levels of availability I project when I'm not in a happy relationship, but luckily this isn't one of them. Carl is the best and I don't even want other people in my fantasies these days.) When I'm alone with her, I'm fine, I feel like myself and I genuinely like her and feel like we can be good friends with some time investment. When I'm with any of the other members... I have that feeling where I have to manually arrange my face muscles to form expressions. Like should I be making sad face now? Attentive face? Am I staring? Am I threatening his dominance? Humans don't show their bellies, do they?
In both cases I alternately become inaudible and overly-deferential, and act up (clown, misbehave, demand attention) in more or less acceptable ways. There is no middle ground where I'm just myself, doing stuff I like to do. Yes, I'm aware that it's a cycle, but that doesn't help. "Relax and be yourself" is about as useful as "bring that fever down." As with the fever, I know some things help, like getting enough sleep and exercise and eating right, but that's not a cure.
Two other things will help--tenure and skill. I have to keep showing up to church and practice. Some of the social contacts and trust will develop that way. I got the invitation to be in the band at all after I played concertina outside in below-zero weather and had been showing up to the Wednesday night song circle for a while. I am slowly developing personal connections with church members independent of my parents. As I get familiar with the rhythms of the groups and how things are done, I will make fewer faux pas that mark me as an outsider. That's cool, I can accept that. I can also accept that practicing the concertina in my spare time will make me feel better about band practice. As I get more comfortable on my instrument and can follow more casual instructions at the same level as everyone else, I will interact in the same way they do and be closer to acceptance. Also totally cool.
But.
Though those things make me better at faking it, they don't really solve the shut down/act up dichotomy, or make me personally comfortable with people. In the pre-service discussion thing at church yesterday, the pastor made an off-hand comment that I found completely incorrect. He said, in reference to "high school" feelings of being excluded from cliques, that eventually you realize it's all internal. You know what? NO YOU DON'T. Because you know what? It isn't all internal! No offense to the pastor who is speaking a bit of wisdom--the internal component is significant--and from his own experience as an educated, athletic, tall white man, but if you have acne, or you're overweight, or you're the only women in the room, or you're TEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN EVERYONE ELSE, sometimes people just ignore you, even when you are being assertive. And once someone's ignored you, there's not actually a polite, non-intrusive way to say "I just said that." Correcting someone higher-status than yourself is rude because they are prima facie more correct than you are, so how dare you challenge them. And other people in the room have skewed likeliness to perceive reality as the higher-status person presents it.
You can say, "Zee, you have social anxiety." Sure whatever. My maladaptive social reactions are learned responses from how people treat me. You know why I'm more comfortable being around the other woman in my band? It's not because I'm more comfortable around women--witness my stunning ineptitude with the grandes dames of my church--it's because she looks me in the eye and treats me like my opinions are interesting. She treats me like a thirty-year-old with a graduate degree, not like a gifted but self-important eighteen-year-old. This is one thing I got from sleeping around in 2012: while seducing a person, I treat myself as their equal. It makes me wish I could seduce the people I am intimidated by, even though I don't find them attractive. This does not make interacting with them any less awkward.
You don't have to listen when I talk, O Generic Reader on the Internet. I'm really flattered when people comment and say they found my reflections worth reading, but this is a LiveJournal and I understand that some of what I write will be boring. I expect things I write here to be judged on their merit, so it's totally cool to like some and not others. It's less cool when I ask, "Is this an appropriate song to add to the setlist for this gig?" and no one answers me either way. It's less cool when I've been trying to get on the speaker's list for five turns and then start talking and get shut down in favor of someone who just put his hand up. (Although I understand why that one happened, because that guy was very quiet and needed encouragement.)
Coda: being older than everyone doesn't help either. I'm now the oldest employee at the Starbucks where I work (I think, I haven't asked all the new people), edging out the assistant manager by a few months and the manager by three years. I spend all my time feeling like I'm 40, wearing sweatpants and with curlers in my hair, which is actually an improvement on the bikini I guess. The other guy about my age successfully clowns; I don't successfully anything.
So here's the tl;dr. At the end of his speech, Lewis argues that the best lifestyle is a lifestyle of quiet competence and friendship with the other quiet competent people. I think that only works if you're in a structural position where other people are willing to recognize your competence, and for most things, you need tutors who are willing to recognize your potential for competence and answer the questions you actually ask instead of repeating advice that addresses a problem you don't have. And that takes a bit of maneuvering if you are in any way structurally subordinate. To be fair, to an MIT graduating class in 1944, Lewis was probably correct to give advice on the side of humility.
And this is the personal side of my thoughts on acceptance and friendship from the previous post. More stuff on the specific religious aspect to come, I suppose.