Social Potlucks

Yo. I guess I'm in no strong position to type anything, since my lethargia and congestion are rueing the day thus far, but that's not to say I won't at least try.

What are we? When I sit down, stand up, walk around a city's downtown blocks..what's actually going on? While sitting on a lift yesterday riding to the top of a peak, somewhere around 8800 ft above sea level Joe posed to me that "we stick together."
This struck me, because I wasn't in this frame of thinking, nor did I think was he. He was referring to social circles. And outcasts from social circles (We being indefinable outcasts).
We all try to be things, lots of different things. Some fall more easily into their desired niches than others, and there are some who stand out in the long run as simply, tirelessly, never fitting in. I breezed through my younger years knowing exactly this - because I could choose about 7 different social categories at school in which I most definitely didn't naturally fit, and maybe about two that I possibly could. The first of those two were the Computer Geeks, the second were the GATE Geeks. And I did plays, so maybe that could be a third: Drama Geek. But seriously. Drama Geek?
For some reason, in those early years I kind of just knew better. Because in even earlier years there weren't clique; they seemed to develop somewhere around our 10th and 11th years of living. But as the rest of the junior high world merged with eachother and fashioned little secure-yet-exclusive social circles, I found myself not. I looked around at them, poked my head in every now and again and definitely got my pride knocked a good few times because of it. Maybe that's what turned me around and made me think, 'why would should I put myself through this?'
I did have friends, but they were like me: unsure about what all this fuss was about when somewhere like two years earlier we were all in the same boat together, and the only thing that divided us were classrooms.
SO I made friends with some teachers, did my homework, and enjoyed learning about computers, and celebrated a couple really solid girlfriends.
Around 14 and 15, high school presented a FAR heavier demonstrative of these social events: and the longer I stayed the more spread out my "fitting in" became. Instead of residing within any particular social circle, I started to relate to ALL of them. I accumulated friendships across the entire social spectrum. Since I didn't belong in any I figured I might as well try to belong in all; show that we are all still just people like we used to be.
I did do drama in high school, and loved the comradery. That became my mostly-niche somewhere around the last half of my last year of the 12th grade. (Maybe it was the Beattyland video that was made for me for my 18th birthday, because that really reeled me into the light of having hilarious true friends.) But these guys weren't snowboarders, so the niche was still not perfect.

After school, I was relieved to discover that the cliques immaculately disappear instantly in the working world. Status-based popularity is empty and temporary and everybody knows it. The cool people are the ones that DO things, and not people that look like they do things. Big difference.

So why does Joe say this now? When we're both in the supposed clear of social hazards, doing lots of things and loving every second of life?
Because it has shaped everybody around us, forever. I could go into a whole new blog about the two business-owning rich guys I sat next to on a different life yesterday.

...

Is it better to know yourself and have fine-tuned opinions about people and things, or to identify with nothing and say Yes to everybody?
I'm not so sure. I waver back and forth between lands of knowing and not knowing.
Joe has gotten farther than me. His experiences far outreach my own. His journeys have really solified his compassionate-yet-thickskinned personality, and I admire that. The only person that he identifies with is the Clique of Himself. And I think that's the direction I like, the same as when we were younger and people started shaping circles in the first place - instead of submitting to someone else's ideals, I get to keep making up my own.