If You Feel like an Outcast and Nobody Gets You, Read This
Common sense is the most common form of insanity
I’m an outcast and it makes me depressed sometimes.
Most people don’t get me. Dinner parties are weird. Neighborly chats in the street feel off. “Going out with friends” is a struggle.
As soon as I talk it’s like I’m an alien. It’s why I still tell people I’m a banker because if I told them what I really did, which doesn’t fit into any defined career path, they’d be so confused they’d tune out.
Being an outcast is a daily struggle.
And it’s the kind of struggle we should embrace. When I talk about being an outcast some people get confused. They think I’m talking about being a weirdo or wearing rainbow-colored pants to the supermarket sometimes. Nope.
An outcast is someone who doesn’t fit in. They’re outspoken. And most of all, they hate the mainstream narrative and avoid it like a bat virus plague.
Here’s why being an outcast is a superpower that you must embrace.
“Fitting in” has the worst rewards in history
When you try to fit in you become someone you’re not.
That means you’re a Hollywood actor jumping through circus hoops trying to do a strip dance for an audience of strangers. Fitting in means not being yourself, and it’s the secret goal of most people.
If you break down people’s fears, like I have through my fearless writer challenge, you realize the average person doesn’t want to rock the boat or speak out of turn.
They’re worried they’ll be canceled or face a moment of public embarrassment, where their execution is televised for the world to see.
Outcasts know this powerful truth: nobody gives a sh*t.
Nobody gives a sh*t about your career.
Nobody gives a sh*t about if you’re poor.
Nobody gives a sh*t about whether you’re happy.
Nobody gives a sh*t about what you write online.
Nobody gives a sh*t about whatever personal tragedy you’re facing.
All the average person gives a sh*t about is themselves.
We’re now all drowning in so many day-to-day problems we don’t have mental bandwidth to deal with anyone else’s. 24/7 news cycles, phone notifications, a full-time career, a lifetime of daily emails to open and delete, a to-do list a mile long.
The modern human is busier than ever so they don’t have time to give a damn about you. And that’s the best news you will hear for the rest of this decade.
If you fit in you’re replaceable.
Fitting in means copying others.
It means you walk and talk the same. It means you wear a penguin suit to work so you look like all the other penguins hoping for a big annual bonus and a juicy promotion.
It means you watch Marvel superhero movies and consume the same Netflix tv series that every other monkey in a clown suit is drowning themselves in so they can numb the pain of their normal life into next year.
Fitting in means 6-figures of debt for a useless college degree.
Fitting in means living next to the Joneses in the suburbs and trying to one-up them every year with a house renovation or new car.
Fitting in means choosing a traditional career path, where your creativity and imagination is suppressed so hard you start to internally combust and sh*t out your mouth.
Fitting in means taking on a home loan to buy a house you can’t afford that you’ll be paying off for the rest of your life. The recurring debt payments mean you can’t take lots of time off work. You must be heavily money-focused for the rest of your life. Always keeping score.
Fitting in means being less than you can be so you don’t shine too bright.
This is a nightmare way to live that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, Matt (screw you if you’re reading, matey, you piece of cr*p).
The traditional path is the path to nowhere.In a world of massive technological change, artificial intelligence that leads to infinite intelligence, low cost or even $0 electricity thanks to nuclear energy, and human labor no longer needed because of robots… doing what humans always did is the path to 1930s depression-like poverty and mental illness.
If you follow the conventional path you’re replaceable.
If you follow your curiosity anything is possible.
Being an outcast creates loneliness which is a superpower
Sometimes it’s lonely for me to be an outcast.
I feel like I don’t belong. But more and more I’m realizing solitude is a powerful habit. When you’re alone you can think deeply. My best creative work comes from periods of loneliness. Time alone lets me shut out the noise and focus.
The flow states that follow we’ll knock most people to the floor.
3 years of work in a week is no joke when you embrace solitude and let it lead to flow states. Maybe the real problem is that humans need to spend too much time socializing so they feel like they belong to something.
In the process, they don’t have enough time to achieve their big goals.
Show me someone who’s okay to be lonely, and I’ll show you an outcast who will go on to do great things and change the world.
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.” — Robin Williams
Common sense is daylight robbery for your future
Screw being normal.
Normal people follow the mainstream narrative. They argue over politics like it’s going to save their lives. Red versus Blue thinking in America is the worst. What if Red and Blue are both part of the same side?
Election promises are bullsh*t. When you’ve only got the top job for 4 years you’ll say anything. If you deliver on none of your promises there are no consequences.
If a guy who’s in his 80s and can hardly string together two words is in charge of the greatest nation on the planet, what does that say?
He’s not running anything. Someone is but it’s not Joe, Kamala, or Orange Man.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, so my best guess is the richest Americans run the U.S. and they use their money to manipulate congress through lobbying. This is why the mainstream narrative is a clown show.
All it does is outsource your control to a 3rd party where you have no control. People tell outcasts like me to follow common sense.
That means taking pharmaceutical pills, murdering loads of animals so I can eat, watching news designed to make me mad, getting into debt through toxic consumerism behaviour, and watching my savings erode to nothing thanks to underreported inflation and money printing.
Common sense is insanity.
Outcasts question everything. They even question the fact-checkers themselves.
Being an outcast is a deep human experience that bends reality
I never fit in at school.
There were three groups: Aussies, Europeans (Greeks/Italians), and Chinese. The Aussies rejected me because I didn’t care about driving fast muscle cars or throwing a shrimp on the barbie. No thanks, mate.
I tried to fit in with the Europeans but their parents told them not to hang around Aussies like me.
Because of their racism, within 6 months of being in high school, my 3 best Italian friends would no longer speak to me. They ran away whenever I came near them. I tried with the Chinese, too, but I couldn’t speak their language so they looked at me and smiled.
By the end of high school, I decided university wasn’t for me.
My school didn’t know what to do with me. They told me to leave so I did. I ended up studying sound engineering with no prior experience. I had to lie about my age to get in at 16 years old when I should have been 18 and had a high school diploma.
In adult life, I decided to marry my wife who is from China. Aussies didn’t get it. They made fun of me. One Medium dot com article ridiculed me and said I was a s*xpat.
I’d never heard this word before.
Nowadays, when I go to pick up my daughter from daycare I get all sorts of strange looks. Only mothers pick up their kids at our daycare. The dads are all at work. When I take my daughter swimming I’m the only dad. The other parents are all mothers.
They all look at me with this strange facial expression that says: “why isn’t he at an office job providing for his family?”
Office jobs made me depressed. That’s why. And gender-allocated roles are silly.
When I was 6 years old my two best friends were Sri Lankan. We played cricket and ate curry every day. As a teenager many of my friends were Muslim.
I fasted with them during Ramadan. I even went to the mosque with them. Now, in my 30s, I go to Jewish Passover every year with friends and even read ancient passages.
When you don’t fit in and embrace other cultures your human experience is way more nuanced. You eat food from different parts of the world. You speak different languages. You go places others are afraid to go.
Black and white thinking and being stuck in a bubble is worse than being an outcast.
The full human experience is understanding all humans, not just the rednecks in your own backyard.
See things differently and tell it as it is
I don’t sugarcoat anything.
I learned this from my former buddha boss, who’s one of the most interesting outcasts I’ve ever come across. He tells it how it is.
If the IT systems at the bank are blowing up, he tells you. “It’s bad. Very bad.” His counterparts would try to make it sound like everything was fine which led to more devastation. Not buddha boss man.
An outcast sees things differently which is why they’re often isolated or treated badly.I find hanging around outcasts useful because of this. I want to know what other viewpoints exist on a topic. If everyone is looking at an issue from the front, I like to talk to an outcast and get the upside-down view.
Growth only happens when we’re forced to stretch ourselves to the point of discomfort.
The world is moving towards a “category of one”
There’s a logical reason why more of us feel like outcasts.
I often say to writers “you are the niche.” Writer Mike Goitein said to me in a chat “we are all a category of one.”
As more of us begin to embrace social media, we no longer fit inside of neat boxes anymore. None of us are single-topic humans. We’re not single-industry humans either. The trend of being a one-person business is catching on.
When you go from believing you’re an employee with a boss, to believing you’re a one-person with one customer (an employer) or multiple clients, your thinking starts to shift. The limitations the world wants to put on you in the form of niches, job titles, and labels don’t make sense anymore.
The more of us that go through this transformation, the more outcasts we will have.
Being an outcast is the highest form of compliment in existence
Let’s finish here.
Being an outcast is a massive compliment. Embrace it. It means you’re not being brainwashed. Instead, you’re programming your own mind. You’re thinking beyond the normal boundaries and daring to be yourself in all its glory.
Go out there and be an outcast with no f*cks given.
Tell me whether you are or are not an outcast and why in the comments below.
Tim, you've articulated the introvert's experience perfectly. I'm not shy, but I often feel drained by social events and small talk. It's not that I dislike people; I just prefer deeper connections and meaningful conversations. Your article validates those feelings and shows that it's okay to prioritize solitude and reflection, even if it means not always fitting in with the extroverted ideal.
Ok you’re explaining the autistic experience, well mine anyway!