I’ve been thinking about this sense of being different from the average person. As if there’s this majority of people who, broadly speaking, form a fairly homogenous group - people who fit together naturally and for whom society is basically designed. And then there’s this smaller group who just don’t quite fit in. It’s like there’s this game we’re all supposed to be playing together, but some of us either aren’t that into the game or want to play it differently.

It’s easy to slip into that “everyone else is an NPC” kind of thinking, but maybe it’s just the result of comparing our inner experience to our external observations of others. It’s tempting to assume that someone with a spouse, a corporate job, a mortgage, a station wagon, a dog, and two and half kids is just living out a script - doing what’s expected - rather than living intentionally. But who’s to say they’re not struggling with the same existential questions as I am?

I think about my parents - about as normal as people get - and I recently asked if they feel normal. They said yes. When I mentioned my lifelong sense of being an outsider, my mom told me that she and my sister had once talked about something I’d done, and my sister had commented, “He’s so weird.” Strangely, that was comforting to hear. It’s not that I see being different as a bad thing - it’s more about that unanswerable question of whether I truly am different, or if I’ve just always felt that way.