I’m late to the gun for the Tuesday Essay, Who are your people? I’ve been late since I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering this. When you spend 1 hour or more a day on the bus, you have a lot of thinking time. Thinking and looking over the past few years of my live, I’ve been scanning over the three main groups of friends I’ve had to see what it is about them that makes me fit in. Why the hell do I fit in with these folks when I have a hard time feeling connected to a group.
The first solid group I would consider my people are my camp friends from my years in Boy Scout camp. The twist on this is that by current Boy Scout standards, I would have been kicked out. By religious standards, I would be canned because I am an athiest. I don’t believe there is a god, but the scouts require the believe in something. Now while being an atheist, I still follow the scout law of being reverant in that I am tolerant of other’s religious beliefs. Religion is a fascinating topic and everyone should have the freedom to worship, or to choose to not worship, whatever or whoever they please. The other point that would give me a swift kick in the pants out the doors is that I think they have gone completely batty in their anti-gay stance. I think it’s closed minded and the arguments for it are pure phobia. There’s no reason to keep gays out of the scouts, or out of anywhere for that matter.
So what did connect me with my scout friends? A big thing is what I was accepted for who I was. I did not have to make any adjustments, it did not matter that at the time my family was breaking apart, it did not matter, that I was initially a touch shy, none of that mattered at all to my friends at camp. I was accepted, even praised, for who I was.
Even more than acceptance, they were also supportive. They wanted to help people, all people. Campers, staffers, parents, who ever walked in the door, we wanted to make them the best they could be. They helped me and others in hard times. They were one of the first times in my life I felt I had a solid support system under me.
The camp staff also opened me up to ideas and activities I would have never been exposed to outside of camp. The ability to present new areas and the helpful hand to help get started in those areas, that is something the staff did almost every day. Whether it was new music, new religions, new activities, new games, new books, new movies, or whatever came your way, there was room to grow and learn.
Those three main parts, acceptance, support, and growth I realized are common across all my main groups of friends over the years. My camp staff buddies, my high school band/geek friends, and my post-college friends. I can be accepted for who I am, I get the support I need to excel, and I can continue to grow. That is what I need in my people.
What drives this home for me is the friend or group cap in college. Timeline wise, my groups are pre-high school-college summers, high school, and post college. During college, I didn’t feel I had a core group of people I could call mine or identify with. I did have friends here and there that fit my people profile, but the friends themselves were all from different groups and did not themselves cross paths. In each group I was in, something was missing to make me feel like a solid part of the group or to make the group feel like it was my people. Some groups I did not feel wholly accepted, other groups were stagnant, and others I failed to feel a support network for neither myself or any of the group members. There was always something missing that kept me from feeling a core part of it.
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